The Angels of the Resurrection

Even when it’s become a piece of furniture
upholstered in the stiff brocade of rigor mortis,
a corpse blistered with acids into a tapestry,
poked full of holes by bullets, and blurred
by miles of roads, they find it.
They find the body because
there is no where it can go, there is no death
deep or dark enough, no unlit alley bleak enough to hide it.
Even hidden it brings the resurrection to it,
even lying low in the slot of the unmarked grave,
its carnality works like a magnet.
They will find it, haul it leaking and weeping
up from the black suction of the fathomless lake.
The lakes, the woods, the gardens are filled
with its unmentionable perfumes.
The body cannot hide, and there’s no room
for modesty, no provision for rest.
They are dogs and wolves. They will find it.
They will dig it up.

From The Nerve Of It: Poems New and Selected, published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 2015 by Lynn Emanuel. Used with permission of the author.