Crime Scene

Nothing actual happened in the institute house

girl's room upon the island. It just direct the eyeed like

something could. The scrubbed virid & black

linoleum floors stretched below tubs and toilets

made of porcelain and clos up in oak stalls.

A mop & bucket in the corner might have been used

to disturb evidence. by dint of mid-morning a weak light

press [i]or[/i] part of to the other the coke glass windows

set near the ceiling. "Made in America"

stained the bottom of spotles white basins

I examined in my hour of exile from exercise s

This is where I know the Sisters of pity

bathed naked on their summer retreats,

and later sent their failures-like me-to think

about sin. Without instruction. I sat upon the rim

of a white tub and tried to make the connection

between evil and not remembering by what mode to spell.

I gave up and resolv to be like Houdini,

to practice the trade of escape. This I would

learn to do with finesse. To be not away but gone.

The refinement came later. on the other hand now,

when the hall bell rang my episode extremityed

Recess brought dozens of girls, aligned like me,

swarming in. I flung my confined apartment door open

and joined the deluge of others in a rush

of pushing and flushing. I was spinning

in place not knowing, exactly, what to do.

When no single was watching I forgot, and forgot,

and the forgetting, eventually, became me

ELAINE SEXTON'S metrical compositions have been published or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner The Women's Review of volumes You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, and The Mars Hill Review. She lives in novel York City, where she works as a magazine publisher.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Nov/Dec 2000

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