Those Girls
Those Girls
Over the weekend, lightning struck
An irrigation pipe that ran between the rows.
It lived like something engendered in a lab,
Flickering across the sullen water
That pooled at the sweet corn’s feet.
The storm it had forked from
Had long gone west and to pieces
But not before inseminating the field
Where the detasseling crew was to resume
Detasseling first thing Monday morning.
Two girls died — one girl touched the pipe,
The other girl touched the other girl
When she cried out. Empathic impulse.
In their rooms, things they had been
Intimate with — combs, rings — glowed blue.
A moment of silence before kickoff.
One had blonde hair, the other black.
One’s parents were white, the other’s hispanic.
Both were wearing gray hoodies,
The sleeves dampened to a darker gray.
They’d been working for hardly anything.
Mall money, with some set aside for college.
After the lawsuit, Monsanto snowed zeros
Into their parents’ accounts.
The company was legally responsible.
Monsanto owned the land, the corn, the pipe.
But no one really believed that
Monsanto killed those girls.
They knew it was the sharklike lightning
Swimming for days in standing water,
Then a great white flash
Their deaths followed like thunder.