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A History Lesson
Bulky Pompei's Pillar
Towers over the Yellowstone Rivering,
A rugged brown bluff
Engraved with historic graffiti
With Clark's signatured
Declaration still writ large
Behind Plexiglas for us to gawk at,
But Lewis ended it all,
And the icy water courses on
Toward the Big Muddy
Finally down to the Gulf,
Each of us a brief tag
In this
Muddled flow of time
Waking at the Funeral
Her face white-puffed and plastic
Rouged and lipped carmine
Couched in the satin pillow;
Why am I staring down
At this female all dressed out?
I don't know this woman!
The shock richters all deep
To my marrow and mien;
This is a mannequined second
Not my dear aunt in her final end.
Almost smiling in consternation,
I wake up at this funeral!
My deepened sorrow lightens,
But I force myself to tradition
And stare down in meditation
At this stiff of skin and bones,
The body, a perfect figure
Of modern funeraled artifice--
I don't know this woman!
Where's her so scrawny face
Wrinkled to prune and 50ish glasses,
Her ornery wiles and devious ways?
Stray mutts played in her bathtub
(The same size as this metal coffin)
Their residue smelling her house
While she placed pet ads in the news
Making loads of money on free dogs.
Where have her shenanigans gone?
I wake up at this funeral!
Even if this rigid corpse had been
Modeled close to her formal picture--
That hangs like a small billboard
For the traffic of the bereaved--
I know this would not be her
Lying still and so stiffly proper;
Not my aunt who used to walk
Down main street, her black
Spider monkey throned on her shoulder
Slurping an ice cream cone.
I don't know this woman!
She would have displayed bananas
And stuffed monkeys in her casket
Or two of her real apes who used to
Gallivant around in Huggies
And bring iced Cokes from the frig
To her skinny, bed-ridden self.
I don't know this woman!
I sigh in lively relief and stroll
Buoyantly back to the rear
Of the viewing room away
From this 3,000 dollar joke
Glad that the deadweight
Of her emphysema-ness
Has been cut clean away.
We wake up at this funeral!
The certain pruning cuts us deep
To the 'morrow,' we who remain
But I do know, really, that my dear aunt
Is not here in this still, prim cadaver
Thank God! We awake!
Daniel Wilcox earned his B.A. in Creative Writing from Cal State University, Long Beach. He is a former activist, former teacher, former wanderer who has farmed in the Middle East and lived on an island in eastern Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared in The Other Side Magazine, various poetry journals such as The Centrifugal Eye, Sentinel Poetry Online, The November 3rd Club, and The Indite Circle. A short story based on his life in the Middle East was published in the September 2007 issue of The Danforth Review. He currently resides on the California coast with his mysterious wife and youngest gaming son. His writer's website is at http://seaquaker.com/ (February 2008)
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