In
Loving Memory
11/7/61
5/14/23
of
our aunt
Lisa
Pizarro
Craig Kirchner
She’d
be coming up on 63 -
is
now filling the rear window,
of
a champagne Stratus,
with
an outlined bullfrog
between
the dates –
a
goitered, double-chin neck
representing
her time here.
We
love you as much as this Dodge!
Darting
recklessly in and out of traffic,
cut
me off - is why I noticed at all.
Six
inches of snow to be scraped off,
then
that 110 degrees in August.
a
gas-guzzling monument.
I
want mine on no less than a Lincoln,
and
with a Leprechaun.
We’re
selling the car, does the decal come off?
Another
quick switch of lanes,
and
I get this vision of trunk and bumper,
mangled
and rusted,
rear-ended
by someone else’s niece,
by
another tribute, with a flag perhaps.
We
miss you when we adjust the mirror.
The
metal now crackled,
twisted
and folded, acres of wreckage
and
black grease undercoat
surrounding
Lisa Pizarro.
The
words frosted amid broken glass,
resting,
still, reflecting the crisp winter sun,
a
bullfrog on an iceberg
waiting
for a dirge.
