Murder-Mystery Poem Poem by Hans Ostrom

Among fictional live bodies lies a fictionally dead one,
made so not by itself but by one or more bodies who
had a mind or minds, means, and opportunity
to kill. Identification ensues. Who is dead, who
killed, who will mislead, confess, and reveal? Enter

empiricism, wearing a thick coat and looking
around with those unmistakable Aristotelian
eyes. The empiricist is a foe of secrecy, a friend
of plodders who trod paths of data, and an assistant
to the plot. In death, on ice, a body in this fiction
is information incarnate. It is cause

for apprehensiveness and apprehension,
justice and correction. Ah, there in a meadow
of likelihood stands a murderer, defined
by spores of imperfection and pride, caught
by humble fact, the residue of act. Under

arrest, a fictional transgressor is held, as I,
satisfied, hold the soft paperback book in my hands.