A Widow's Funky Life

Widow Ragsdale's shanty,

---smells seeping from doors,

windows, roof, fake brick siding

---was a monster's nostrils spewing

steaming shit --rancid, mephitic,

toxic

Words for rotten fish, putrid out-

houses, rotting vegetables -- for

Miss Sukey, our mule who died

in a ravine --didn't fit the fetid

odor whirling from the Widow's.

Dad said the stink exceeded any vile,

noxious-to-the-nose, ferocious

fart by a country mile.

Widow Ragsdale, a village treasure---

ancient, endured without rancor

despite being a backslider,

whistled suggestively at males,

wore a halter top in August--

labored in her gardens, picking red

tomatoes to give away, deadheading

petunias days before her demise.

Even then some claimed a repulsive

stench rose in her dust, a haunting

Hawthorne hag causing blossoms

to wilt, contaminating nature.

After no Widow sighting for five

days, her house was stoned:

kids threw rocks on her tin roof,

town gossips pointed fingers,

tongues tattled. On the sixth day,

the Holiness preacher declared

God would forgive anyone who

rammed her door to bring out

the corpse.

The Widow was hauled away at midnight,

taken to a country cemetery, buried

without song or scripture, her shanty

torched, gardens plowed under, petunia

seeds sown by winds across the small

plot of the woman, once-treasured