MAUSOLEUM

A storehouse secures
these frail lockets

of muscle and tendon,
prong and tumbler.

Each hip is a bezel,
each vertebra a charm,

each charm a relic
that disperses like foam.

Kim Roberts Meikle is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Q&A for the End of the World, a collaboration with Michael Gushue (2025), and two guidebooks, including The District’s Departed: Walking Tours of DC-Area Cemeteries (forthcoming 2026).

From the I, Too, Am America Project, selected for publication in the Amplify US Literary Journal