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Valerie Loveland

Unsolved Mysteries: Widower Husbands

When they go on the show they know what to say.
Even before the show, they know
                                             how to say they didn’t do it.    Nobody
                                                                needs to say what         it          is.
                                                                Every it is the same it
and every she                         is the same she.                             Why
                                                  won’t the camera record their hands
during the interview? Why didn’t someone put the wedding photo
in their hands               and record their expression?

The wedding photo is not interviewed,            but it knew
as soon as the camera shutter                         opened
what was going to happen                                 10 years later.

Viewers get our own set of clues:
                                                             We can tell
by the room where they interview, by the shirts they wear.

We know if they say                                            a rough patch
                                                                     rocky
                                                    struggling
                       not getting along
having problems.

If they admit one thing,                      they admit every           thing.
​

 Unsolved Mysteries: Robert Stack is a Series of Tubes

He is the root of a connective data structure, meets with us weekly
so he can tell us                       what we need to know,
                                                                              all at once.

Asking Robert Stack to look for
                                                       [a] something or [a] someone on
                 Unsolved Mysteries is like looking for [the] someone on the internet.

His voicebox/larynx is a sponge that soaks up

                                                                                heights and weights/scars/timelines of events/videos of fires/
                                                                                orphans/amorphous music/fugue state/abandoned cars/cold
                                                                                night/police blotter/drops of blood/                           nightmares

and on camera, he                                               wrings        out       that       sponge.

The wind blew open his trenchcoat
and I saw
                   inside was not a body, but pipes
                                                                             and copper wires.
                         He looks like an empty subway tunnel,
not abandoned, but undiscovered: a secret
packed away, sealed, waiting.


Even Robert Stack Dies

The internet told us all together, just like Robert Stack
would have.                               Death happens to everyone,
                     [but] how could his heart fail
         when Robert Stack has never failed
                                          a thing in his life?

                           How can there be [a] death without [also an] investigation?

How are we sure
tears are sincere
until the results
come back from the lab?

                                                                                                         We don’t know
what happens in a mortuary without light that bends
                                                                   through a camera lens.

                                                                                         Moths have been masticating
                all of Robert Stack’s wool sweaters again--so many
                                                                                           miniscule holes.

I don’t think he [actually] died--I look at my television screen,
and he is still there.
​

Valerie Loveland is a poet and programmer living in Philadelphia. She is the author of Mandible Maxilla, Female Animal, and Reanimated Somehow. She enjoys audio poetry, fountain pens, silent movies, and celebrity cats.
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