The Poems the Dead Girl Wrote

were very good
and then she died

very young
which made them

better than anything
she would ever write.

They were short
and difficult

and beautiful the way
the dying are.

The fact that she was
beautiful herself,

as you could see
from her picture,

had only as much
to do with the poems

as the facts
in the little obit

had to do with
the enormous

gorgeous music
of her short life

and how it ever
fit inside it.

by Paul Hostovsky