Greenmount Cemetery

Across the street, façades of caved houses 
hold on to their addresses. I could resurrect one 
with drywall, a skylight, a doorbell. 
Water could course through pipes again 
with the turn of a meter key 
plumbed into the sidewalk for the main valve. 
There’s nothing like that among the graves. 
I can’t jam my arm shoulder deep in the soil 
and jumpstart the wormy heart, can’t pretend 
the owl blinking in the locust tree is a reincarnation,
the ginko’s yellow bloom, a communique. Okay,
maybe the fox is an emissary from below, 
coat encrusted with the sewer’s dried afterbirth. 
It bares its teeth and begins to gekker. 

HENRY MILLS

Henry Mills was born in Washington, DC to a Salvadoran mother and a Jewish-American father. His work has appeared in Origins Journal, the anthology The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and Epiphany Magazine. He received an MFA in poetry from New York University.