Dirt to Dirt
Two times
I’ve lived
across the
road from
cemeteries.
More than those
sad families
coming and
going to bury
and remember,
I’m curious
about the grave
diggers with
their foul
language and
heavy equipment.
Every death
must be just
another boss
to them.
*
Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections: Magpies and Crows; Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See. Beatty’s poems and stories have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Conduit, Cowboy Jamboree, CutBank, Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Gulf Coast, Hobart, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, The Moth, The Quarterly, Rattle, RHINO, Seventeen, The Southern Review and Sycamore Review. In 2021 Beatty released Hobo Radio, a spoken-word album featuring banjo and guitar improvisations by Charlie Parr.
