James Fleming

WORKING HOMICIDE

He greets us at the door.
“She’s downstairs on the floor,”
he says, “behind the bed.”
We find her, as he said,
wedged into the narrow space
with nothing but a trace
of blood in her black hair
to show us where
the bullet struck and threw
her back before she knew
how their shouted argument
had fired his rage and sent
him groping in the dresser drawer
to threaten, as he had before,
to silence any sound.
She might have stood her ground
and told him that she knew
the secret of his manhood grew
out of his father’s mocking scorn
when a weakling son was born.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012
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