Speaking of The Dead



 



Speaking of the Dead



I wanted what anyone

With an ear wants--

To be touched and

Touched by a presence

That has no hands.

                        I Know What I Love

                        Jericho Brown



Maybe it's like this: we confuse speaking

ill of the dead with speaking honest

                                                        ly

of the dead like some slate's sprayed

clean and we're the deity


who's rubbed, wrist to furied elbow, all

the hand entire the life they lead

                                                        on

our body and mind like they were

some master cartographer and we


blank as a sea after the great

rain's finished and finally giving in

                                                        to

itself.  I'm thinking I don't mean no

disrespect but I'm telling you straight


through to Sunday I won't tell you a lie

so you can all of a sudden be comfortable

                                                     with

the dead and all they left behind by their

dying.  The open doors.  The tone


of their denials, adamant as yet to be

quarried stone.  Ask me.  Ask me how

                                                        more

than once so that it became a kind of habit,

he shot the dogs and left what was left


of them: fur, lip, skin of snow-froze paw

pad on the snow and dragged those sad bastards

                                                            out

to the woods early after we'd left for school

and he'd be done by the time our milk


dried on the rim of the cereal bowl.  Ask me

how it ever smelled like gun oil and cast-off

                                                            rags

maybe he'd rummaged the backs of our drawers

for where we stuffed everything that didn't


fit.                    

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