Driving Past Plainfield
“Farmer Admits ‘Killing for Seven Years’;
Latest Victim, 58, Disappeared Saturday.”
—L.A. Times Nov. 18, 1957
It’s actually a beautiful place.
New snow covers
the remnants of plants
indigenous to the ditches.
Scattered pines line the highway
among skeletal oaks and maples.
Dried fields of grain wave like hell.
I think I hear him whisper
in the wind blowing over my hood,
She isn't missing. She's at the farm
right now. She’s here.
Winter rushes down my spine.
In the rearview mirror,
my breath escapes
like a ghost between my teeth.
The movies make it different,
move it to Texas or a lonely motel,
but it happened here, in this cold,
quiet, beautiful,
Wisconsin town.
—Joey Goodall, St. Paul, MN
