Poem to Retweet upon News of My Death

I kept the six of spades tacked to my corkboard

and when I had a bad day, I imagined some

exhortation beside it: pleasure first, or

you don’t have to, and in the pinning

I could give up the thought. If pressed, I’d say it was

my way of controlling this whole operation.

Once I learned I could have the last word

I couldn’t stop having it. Something scrawled out

on a notecard, collectible; something kind or

something contemptible. It was never in the novels

because the narrative demands did me in—

I always wanted to marry everyone off. (It meant

a lot of sequels.) When my doctor said you should have

come in sooner, applying the analgesic, I thought instead

about the Illinois State Fair. French fries by

the hotel pool, my new husband’s jazz funk band.

A forest inside of a glass. Her blanket stitch. A roll

of butcher paper that I sacrificed by inches.