“3rd grade is too young to see a corpse.”
hear my auntie whisper to mama.
Knew what mama would say before the words came rolling out
between two puffs of a cigar.
“He’s going.”
Mama had the final word.
3rd grade wasn’t too young to see a corpse
It wasn’t soon enough.
We should confront the dead from birth
from the moment we emerge bloody and screaming
Our mother’s womb entombed with the dying mass
of our former gelatinous existence.
We are already confronting.
The walking dead
the dying masses, the forgotten and old
Mama and papa too.
Trudging along the sidewalk with his shiny new cane
Old man, geriatric, shell of a former self — every morning
confronting the corpse in his bathroom mirror
