Poetry month - let the dead rise, by Raya

[crazyjane]

let the dead rise
by Raya


paper sits on the wooden table & doesn't know what touch feels like.

& what of touch — indelicate, I didn't intend to cocoon it beneath a shell
conditioned not to break. a pen, I am thinking, touching: I can write

mother's body is not a sunday dress an ambulance collects
& hauls down the street for the examiner to unstitch, for the mortician
to suture back & breathless. I have to believe that

I can write:

mother's body is not a dead thing I watch others gently pack into soil

where above, someone erects stone that reads: she rests in peace.

my grandmother calls peace heaven, & I say what she calls heaven is earth
swallowing a person. I say we are Abraham sacrificing the son without lamb.



via deviantart