Elegy
In sun the sunburned skin sloughs off the sunburned shoulder.
Most folks believe this is the body’s slow mend.
Most folks believe in the good yolk of the soul.
I believe in autopsy lingo of natural causes should be replaced
with of long-term exposure to the dim, unwavering radiation of the morning star.
The evening they burn your body,
I step into the garden and arrange a crooked line of birdbaths to skip stones across
until a bell tower tolls its eight arguments against daylight
and the skyline illuminates, ragged and unmended
like a poem turned on its side.
The evening they burn your body,
I believe I’ll step into the living room and be greeted by you
or by someone who could play you in a movie.
The curtains are an aurora of earthly proportion.
You don’t exist.
A flash igniting the paned glass is the silent lightning outrunning its noise.
You’re on fire.
Copyright Credit: Jaswinder Bolina, "Elegy" from Phantom Camera. Copyright © 2013 by Jaswinder Bolina. Reprinted by permission of New Issues Press.
Source: Phantom Camera (New Issues Press, 2013)