by Anna Egeland
I
After Jeff Wall
Bullet-proof vests hunched over cardboard boxes.
Black latex fingers sifting through papers,
a permanent marker poised, ready to label
“Evidence.” Around them, a life arrested: telescope tilted skyward,
half-full ashtray on the dining room table,
and barely visible, high up where no one will spot it:
a Snap-On calendar, the woman’s sleek tan body oiled up
and stretched out over the hood of a fat teal pickup,
a low-rider. A pile of clothes on the ground,
as if they’d strip-searched the guy right there.
bbbbbAt the top of the stairs, a child’s finger painting.
II
We ate in the park that night,
excited about the take-out pizza,
the novelty of a dinner-time picnic.
Our mother, still worried about our bones,
insisted on Dixie cups of milk.
They didn’t bother to clean up after.
Each holiday we discovered decorations
broken, misplaced, missing.
I never forgave them
for Tinker Bell’s fractured wing.
Anna Egeland holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida. She was a finalist for the 2025 Rash Award in Poetry and a recipient of a college prize from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems can be found on poets.org and in the Broad River Review (forthcoming).
Hawaii Pacific Review 