I don’t like writing about the dead,
conjuring them in language
that some of them
never would have used—
pushing them onstage,
saying, “Go. It doesn’t have to be
the truth.”
Something’s varnished about it,
all klieg lights and rouge,
all glistery shadows.
Yet what else is there to do?
Shouldn’t you, dear reader,
be led to see these glossy,
passionate,
stumping souls
who once plowed a field in the face
of a tornado,
tangoed with a wooden leg,
sashayed an armadillo on a leash?
Perhaps not. Perhaps you’ve
already left the page,
dealing with your own ghosts,
throwing them over your shoulder like
salt:
a grandmother, a child,
a brother missing in action
who smoked every day a pack of Camels
and had a way with mules.
how a cat looks Death in the eye
but once and turns
to sink beneath Death’s eye.
How, while darkness corrodes the
liver,
bladder, spleen,
the world tends to its stirring,
its bright birds.
How, as the woman rankles
at death’s deliberate clumsiness,
the cat neither questions
nor complains.
How, even in the sift of our
ashes
we remain
helplessly who we are.
This one lets you enter
just under its title.
You walk around,
searching for the lost mother, dog,
cat,
child.
You are somewhat comforted;
surely here lie answers.
You tap on its walls.
The poem offers its dull, diminishing
ticks
like an engine cooling.
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