Gravedigger

Abstract

Gravedigger Kristin Robertson (bio) Kristin Robertson, poetry The night after surgery, our father sendsa photo of the stump, a root-bound plant,eased from its pot. Like an orphanage nunI want to swaddle his amputated legand hand over the bundle to whoever holdsa train ticket from this war-torn city.Years ago, after they first married,he ran naked, dripping from the hot tub,through their backyard and lit tiki torchesfor my stepmother. He conjured wildfires,his footprints in snow like the reindeerhe was. As a teenager, he dug graves.Young and strong, my mother says,he had nothing better to do with his time.You know how they say hiking is justwalking? Graves are just holes. Exceptthere are coffin templates, a scienceto the shoring of the edges, a scienceto the depth and weight. Weekends withDad we wandered the town's one museum,glass boxes of wool coats, pinned-up pants.Surgeons cantilevered bullets into mouthsof their patients, men set to lose a limbor two. By our third or fourth visit,we lined up the bite marks to our teeth.Then we'd go to what our father calleda bird sanctuary. Sitting in the fieldafter drive-thru burgers, we never sawa single bird. I know now a graveyardis just grass. Unchained clover. Beforethe spades and tarpaulins, it's hard earth,orchestras of crickets, and in your armswhatever you've carried there to bury. [End Page 38] Kristin Robertson kristin robertson is the author of Surgical Wing. Her poetry appears recently or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Southern Review, Threepenny Review, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals. Winner of the Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, she has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and Squaw Valley. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Tennessee Wesleyan University. Copyright © 2019 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.