We were going to hike,
but instead we go to the site
where a president was murdered
We find the memorial first, perplexing
in its emptiness
A memorial for someone whose remains
are elsewhere
Outside, it resembles a 1970s office building
inside, just air and a black slab
It looks too easy to step on,
more stage than tomb
Three blocks away, we find
two X’s painted on the road, a third closer to the on-ramp
I watch two men wait for a break in the traffic,
dart out, crouch, grin for a picture
It feels so tacky and empty
A circle in the window of the sixth-floor museum
where the gunman stood
Maybe it’s so you can look through
and see what he saw, I say
I don’t know if I’d want to, Jenny replies
A man approaches with a newspaper from 1963,
talking about how the government wanted Kennedy dead
Overwhelmed by conspiracies, I wander off,
peer at a picture on a sign of the car-full,
two important couples,
one man injured,
one dead
The signs lining Main Street proclaim
JFK was here
Like he just came for the parade and went home
Jenny says, JFK was a lot of places
But he died here
