Finding Ray’s Sausage in East Cleveland on Google Earth

Lucky gave me the idea: searching for aerial photographs

of Alice Sebold’s path post-rape—from a friend’s house, through

           I could read no more after zooming to each location.

Days later: the news of Anthony Sowell, who requested help in prison

and got nothing, before the almost-snuff-film reports, his bipolar

rapes and abuse. The stories that followed seemed unreal: coercion with King

Cobra malt liquor, unknown smells from his house

next door to Ray’s Sausage, while the cops ignored every call for years.

           Finally, after one woman’s report, the cops entered, found eleven

bodies in crawl spaces, under the porch, skull in a bucket on the third floor.

Anthologies exist of artifacts: sad clowns painted by Gacy,

Fish’s letter to Gracie Budd’s parents, and the horned, cartoon

demons of Richard Ramirez. But what will remain of Sowell

in the future? Talks of the wrong side of town, racism, the constant

           beating of women? Now I can’t stop: aerial views from films,

headlines of tragedies, property lines and their clusters of houses—

as if we could tear off roofs with our hands, never able to look inside.