Poems by Clinton Van Inman

JANE DOE

Just a few broken bits of bone
Some scraps of cloth and a hair or two
Marked and placed in plastic bags
Is all that remains of you

Wild dogs took all the rest
From what little they could obtain
They pieced like a jigsaw puzzle
And now they call you Jane.

Sketch artist captured well
That girlish grin that gentle curl
As your composite un-identified you
Eighteen to twenty-one, front page girl.

But I knew it took more than snow
To cover you as your trail of footprints
From DNA was more than enough to show
As if alive your forensic finger now points

WORKMEN

Let me dip my hands in it
Wrap my fingers around its
Fully charged power train
Like a mechanic

Let me feel its pounding pulse
Like a V-8
Until my hands are black
Covered with oil.

We huddle under the hood
Get charged by moving parts
And always high on horsepower
Our kinetic vision leaps

Like a dynamo of finely turned turbo
Purely rotary with combustion
Always louder than her talk
Of rainbows or rhapsodies.

Clinton Van Inman was born in Walton-on-Thames, England in 1945, grew up in North Carolina, received his BA in Philosophy San Diego State University 1977, and has been an educator most of his life, currently a high school teacher in Tampa Bay. He lives in Sun City Center, Florida with his wife, Elba.