My skeleton, my rival

Interesting that I have to live with my skeleton.

It stands, prepared to emerge, and I carry it

with me—this other thing I will become at death,

and yet it keeps me erect and limber in my walk,

my rival.

What will the living see of me

if they should open my grave but my bones

that will stare at them through hollow sockets

and bared teeth.

I write this to warn my friends

not to be shocked at my changed attitude

toward them, but to be aware

that I have it in me to be someone

other than I am, and I write to ask forgiveness

that death is not wholesome for friendships,

that bones do not talk, have no quarrel with me,

do not even know I exist.

A machine called skeleton will take my place

in the minds of others when I am dead

among the living, and that machine

will make it obvious that I have died

to be identified by bones

that have no speech, no thought, no mind

to speak of having let themselves be carried

once around in me, as at my service

at the podium or as I lay beside my love

or when I held my child at birth

or embraced a friend or shook a critic's hand

or held a pen to sign a check or book

or wrote a farewell letter to a love

or held my penis at the bowl

or lay my hand upon my face at the mirror

and approved of it.

There is Ignatow, it will be said,

looking down inside the open grave.

I'll be somewhere in my poems, I think,

to be mistaken for my bones, but There's Ignatow

will be said. I say to those who persist,

just read what I have written.

I'll be there, held together by another kind

of structure, of thought and imagery,

mind and matter, love and longing, tensions

opposite, such as the skeleton requires

to stand upright, to move with speed,

to sit with confidence, my friend the skeleton

and I its friend, shielding it from harm.

Copyright Credit: David Ignatow, “My skeleton, my rival” from Living Is What I Wanted: Last Poems. Copyright © 1999 by Yaedi Ignatow. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: Living Is What I Wanted: Last Poems (BOA Editions Ltd., 1999)