Claudia Grinnell

BEING DEAD AND ALL

I’ve been dead
for fours days now,
and I’m feeling pretty
good.  The smell
is difficult, of course,
so keep your distance
or dab me
with that expensive perfume,
The Good Life
in the green bottle.
They tell me that in a month
or so (three at the most)
I’ll be down to bone,
and then dust—well, you know
the drill.  Well, maybe you don’t,
that’s the reason you’re here,
asking what’s it like, you know,
being dead and all.  Death is
contagious, you catch it
when a yellow butterfly
begins to nest in your brain,
gnaws at your corpus collosum.
Butterflies are highly underrated
in the process
of death.  Just say No-
vember and don’t turn
on the lights.  It won’t help,
of course.  Even Orpheus turned.

Location: Monroe, Louisiana Email: grinnell@spock.ulm.edu Publications: Exquisite Corpse, Princeton Arts Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, Recursive Angel, Blue Moon Review

- Poetry - Roaches Running From the Light White As Camphor Coveting the Ends of Bread One of Our Haunts Leaded Holding Patterns And Still, This Time Being Dead and All choice Risikesh - Prose - Paused

| Current Edition | Previous | Submit | Editors | Join | Links | Contact | Sundress |