How You Know which One is Yours

It’s the logistics that trip you up.
You should have bought large garbage bags
to put the clothes in, though they aren’t garbage,

still with his smell in them, burlap and lemon.
To trick a sheep whose lamb has died
farmers flay the dead one
and put its fleece on a living one
so the mother will suckle it for her own.

You put on his warm barn coat.
There’s a tissue in the left pocket.
The president said today every effort
is being made to keep the troops safe.
All the other pockets are empty.

*Born and raised in the foothills of the Virginia Blue Ridge, Michael Chitwood is now a free-lance writer living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He is a graduate of Emory & Henry College (BA) and the University of Virginia (MFA). Ohio Review Books has published two books of his poetry—Salt Works (1992) and Whet (1995). His third book, The Weave Room, was published by The University of Chicago Press in the Phoenix Poets series (Spring 1998). His collection of essays, Hitting Below the Bible Belt, was published by Down Home Press in 1998. Chitwood is a regular commentator for radio station WUNC-FM. His book reviews and articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Greensboro News & Record, Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer magazine.