Explore Poems: Death

Every morning opening the newspaper, I am faced
with the thin line that divides disaster and deprivation
from a world of luminous wealth. Tuesday, January 29th,
for instance, bodies, many of them children, lie on the ground
They drowned in the canal trying to escape a weapons depot fire
and explosion in Lagos. Their heads are twisted in straw and dust
near the feet of on-lookers whose cries we cannot hear

You may find her behind 

         Rowan Oak, a shadow 

              of fortress where then now 

         you find no real entry place. 

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater…

I prayed for my friend to live and he didn’t. I held his puffy hand, his heart jumping green on the…

mom tells me I smell like
her Mom—
something flowery and 

the blackened endings
of a joint.
I feared her …

until the clock of my grandmother’s body
                   stopped working & her remains

were lowered into the earth on…

Do not tell her that Grandma is watching her from

        above. She is not religious.           (And nervous about the…

Because why not? Why not take the smashed pinecone 
of my life, render it in purple? Why not dream of…

Is this the last time I’ll admire the guys
in their neon-yellow slickers, guiding us
to our parking spots…

In Francisco Oller’s El Velorio, a child lies
on a table as if sleeping. It is covered in lace

and blossoms…

It leaves a mark on me when I fall
in my father's kitchen.
Only a few days it's been
of lifting him up …

On my way to the fertility clinic,
         I pass five dead animals.

First a raccoon with all four paws…

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry …

                                      PRIMEAt dawn, the shapes of cypresses in fog
Were fingers pointing up from graves, as if what's born…

See’st thou yon gray gleaming hall,
Where the deep elm-shadows fall?
Voices that have left the earth
  …

                                              I

What shall I do with this absurdity —
O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,
Decrepit age that...

When you looked up and said, “Thank you,” I saw
your gratitude rise over us like rain.
It seemed external…

Of all the times I wished you would die quick,
my despair ballooning like a cartoon
bubble (but kept…

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bellAnd many a lesser bell sound through the room;And …

Between us, there are one hundred one
umber haints in our home.

In bed, we discuss
our future, our children…