The noose around your neck
Is around ours
Necks warped and twisted
By pools of molten tears
Erupting without warning

She was an infected bullet wound
Giving you tetanus
A black line that raced to your mind
Reddening your eyes
So you only saw death

You burned in the fire of Hades
Capricious flames dancing
A witch burning alive
Found guilty of being human
A verdict you couldn’t live with

They can't point fingers now
At the void where you were
And their fingers are lost
In old handkerchiefs
Saturated with their tears

Flowers replace you
Where you once stood
White when they should be black
You choke on religion
Even now

We pull back the soil
Tucking you up with the earth
Kissing you with impotent words
Burying you under the rope
You carried so diligently in life

Foot meets the metal of a cold shovel
with a sun beaming down
booted foot pushes the *****
into the soft and rooty ground

one mound of dirt
sweat forms above the brow
two mounds of dirt
salty bead slithers down
three mounds of dirt
tuned into the sounds
four mounds of dirt
birds chirp all around

stopped by a thick root
extra force must be used
give that shovel a pogo of boots
and we are at the fifth mound

six and seven are easy
as the hole starts to round
eight nine ten eleven twelve
a tomb has been found

carried your sheet covered corpse
laid you in the hole
cover you with what was uncovered
creating a man made knoll

Six years of memories
laid underneath this red dirt
many years missing
that time gone subvert

Take your shovel
shield the light
it burns my skin.

You have unearthed me
when I did not know
I was buried.

Internal sufferings
my home
now brought into

open air.

writhing.

my lashes bleed in fear
I escape — away from myself
the warmth reminds me

my scars shine in the sun

cover me, until I understand.

Dad didn't want a coffin.
"Cremate my last remains,"
And so we did.
Cool and dry,
His ashes, urned,
Lie beneath the sod
And prairie sky
Waiting some clarion call,
Some trill of hope,
Bright, re-constitutional,
Faith-affirming.

Mother's wishes rise before us:
No crematory,
No embalmer.
Just her blanket,
Just a hole
Dug beside our Dad.

The law would let her wish be true,
But her children won't.
We're searching coffin plans.
Reverently grim,
Lovingly deferential,
Dutifully rebellious,
Solemn this journey be.

Pine boards to honor her thrift
But smooth and tight,
Rope handles, fitted lid,
Perhaps a little trim,
Perhaps a sheaf of wheat carved
For the old farmer she was.

We'll bury her,
Wrapped in her blanket,
Tucked securely in pine
Beside my father's ashes.

Like a grain of wheat she'll lie
Silent in her final say
Inside our final say
Waiting Resurrection Day.

There was a funeral in St. Thomas d'Aquin,
And it wasn't in the Latin tongue,
Not English, Italian, not even Norse.
It was unctioned in French, of course.
But it may as well've been Greek.
I sat reserved in my seat,
As many a French rose up to speak.
But the incense was the same,
And the holy water sprayed on my glasses,
And I sat as people knelt
And blessed themselves,
And joined in on the refrain,
I knew it by its name: Le chemin. La verite. La vie.
It's a form of glossolalia,
And it's coming for us daily.
The mourners were onto something more,
Than words, gestures and litanies,
Something greater than any of these,
Yet the translation was lost on me.