By Justin Morgan
ARCHAEOLOGY
When I am dead
they will excavate
the rooms of my house
to unearth me in an artifact
in fingerprints still intact
on a pair of goggles,
a box of LPs,
a game of Scrabble
on a closet shelf.
They’ll find a bit of DNA
on a Bible & an old guitar,
a strand of hair
on a flannel shirt.
But then they’ll discover
my retainers & wonder
if I wore them all my life
out of fear or duty
& if they were ever properly cleaned
given their crusty wires.
They’ll question their age
& how long their little yellow case
sat beside the sink. They’ll calculate
dimensions to measure the decibels
of the lisp the thick palate
gave my tongue,
guess & conjecture
all sorts of theories
& come up still empty.
Nevertheless, they will know
with absolute certainty
that I had lived, & died,
with beautiful, straight teeth.
THE WINDMILLS OF MYKONOS
From my little table
at the cocktail bar,
I wonder what it must’ve been like
all those years ago
when they were still in the business
of bread-making—
to see their twelve wooden blades
circling round & round,
their millstones grinding wheat & barley
while women on rooftops
hang clothes on a line
& fishermen eat oysters
by the water’s edge.
Now, four centuries later,
tourists in their sun hats & khakis
encircle them like ants around a sugar cube,
taking selfies beside their quiet, white-washed bellies.
The waitress refills my glass
& asks where I’m from,
& I tell her Virginia, which,
ironically, is also her name,
her father once a bishop
in a town just south of Richmond.
And as she turns away
I grin at the memory
of how from the pulpit of my sailboat
a few hours earlier
I saw them standing atop the hill
like fat little monks,
white-robed, scalp-shaven,
chanting hymns to God in heaven
of how everything is praise—
the salt, the lobsters,
the pebbles in the sand—
yes, even those five old windmills
like clergymen cloistered above the Aegean,
officiating the marriage
of the sky & sea.
Justin Morgan teaches at Central Virginia Community College and is working on an MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University. His work has appeared in Eleutheria, Revolute, LAMP, and other journals. He lives in Lynchburg, VA, with his wife and three kids.
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