life’ll kill ya then yer dead
when the last cave person lay inert+decompose
his people kicked at his legs +left him there to sleep
when they returned in the morn there was he
now shorn of scalp nightweasels they came the tribe
pondered this +huddled in fear who would next lay? +was
this inert thing a contagion? like the barking cough they all
barked come damp spring days
a pyre was made +they looked at each other sidelong thus
paranoia +religion were born alongside immortality +fate
we aren’t much more sophisticated eyeing the bereaved suspiciously
will they give what he had to me? think smallpox diphtheria et al
everything burned clothes linens toys go ahead ask anyone who
was in a sanitarium circa 1925
from our old mother’s recollections at 7: saw her parents thru a
fence darkly toys ash sister dead +then there is grief itself a country
where u linger for about a year skin flayed half mad with one foot in
their graves
20 something doctor in sweats tells u to buckthefuckup! i’ll give u three
months then a prescription this as the scent of dying brother wafts up
u know how deathbed scenes cling then she comments on my pink shoes
+ returns to her screen
she couldn’t put a blouse on? a pair of pants? a bra? fer chrissakes..
__
Fall 2021
songanddancegirl 