In the Bones

—For CMV

I find a small skull in our backyard woods

alien elongated cranium spikey

zygomatic processes like antennae

I send pictures to a friend she says

skunk young the sutures aren’t

fused I brush away leaves pull up

weeds ilia ischia scapula

jugals vertebrae ribs the dirt

not disturbed as if the bones dropped

from sky or from the hickories looming above

my friend says there are stories in the bones

I’ve never smelled or seen skunk on our lot

but more than once heard a great horned

owl in the dark announce himself

Staging

The hospice nurse came out
to the kitchen, said we could
go in. Mom lay in the center

of her bed, white sheets
and taupe blankets tucked
at her sides. She wore

her white cashmere sweater,
a silver pendant with a pink pearl
unmoving against her chest.

Silver hair combed. Mouth
and eyes shut. This staging
was the last time I saw Mom.

A nurse’s act of kindness,
but still I couldn’t help
but think about her poking

through Mom’s jewelry box,
vanity, and dresser drawers,
and for a long time after,

the two mortuary men
who took her away like a prop
in a black zippered bag.

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer, visual artist, and educator. He is the author of the full-length collection Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022) and Ubasute, winner of the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. His honors include a MacDowell Stanford Calderwood Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Fellowship Award, and a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, The Cincinnati Review, Consequence, Shenandoah, Gordon Square Review, Cave Wall, and elsewhere.