June 3rd

JuPo Challenge 2 - long poem; an experiment in concrete form and structure (real unsure of part II, and S2 of part I).

Ten Pounds, and No Epitaph

I.
I thought his return would be weird
and creepy; my own private little showing
of some murky black-and-white film noir
reeled out in real-time. My dreams

were surreal, fashioned from faux sniplets
of old horror movies the week before:
a shrieking woman cleaving the fog
with bloodied talons; unnoticed,
a shifty-eyed servant sliding a latch;
the bloodsucker float-walking in
and me, knees shaking, back to a corner
making the sign of the cross.

Returned to the house he didn’t dare a moan
or haunt the hallway
but settled in to become a dust collector,
another ugly knick-knack
in my mother’s bedroom.

Funny how death mimics life,
and how I never expected him
to weigh so much
or that there’d be enough of him left
to fill a jumbo-sized kleenex box,

but I was wrong.


II.
He’s in a
plain, white
carton
the size of a
small
loaf of bread
inside a white
paper shopping bag
sitting on the floor
in the corner of
the dining room
beside the end table
snugged into
the corner near
the door.


III.
"Where we gonna put’im?"

"I don’t know. You’re the one
who has to live with’im."

He ends up in mom’s bedroom
tucked away in the corner
of the closet shelf
shut safely in
behind closed doors.

COPYRIGHT JUNE 2006 BY COOKALA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED