Dealey Plaza Action Set
By Laurie Barton


This set contains a grassy knoll.
A book depository, ten motorcycle cops.
One governor, a limo driver, and citizen-spectators.
You can play with a single loony assassin
or several in any combination:
Cuban, Sicilian, Russian, or federal.

There is no blood.
All figures are silent as the President's head
snaps back, the wind-up First Lady
crawls out of the backseat.
She keeps her balance on the shiny trunk,
not even tipping her pillbox hat.

You can re-enact this for hours.
It never gets dull
if you dream of back-story:
warm afternoons on the yacht, Honey Fitz,
that girl at the Sands lounge, dark lashes,
the awful grace described by Aeschylus.

Laurie Barton lives in southern California, where she teaches English to speakers of other languages and edits poetry for The Sylvan Echo (www.sylvanecho.net) Her work has appeared in Kaua'i Backstory, Phantom Seed, Snakeskin, Three Hawks Quarterly, and The Rambler. In 2008 she won the New Southerner Literary Prize in Poetry. 

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