Thinking about cemeteries…
OVERPOPULATION
There are too many dead
bodies for the local cemetery,
children and children’s children
squeezed out of the family plot,
limbs and ribs encroaching as their bodies
fold unnaturally to conserve
precious space beneath the grass.
Others overlap in a boundary dispute
between neighbors
who have long since forgotten
their own quiet names.
A disturbance of heavy equipment —
backhoes and jack hammers –
jars the hard ground
as a new mausoleum goes up and up
in the last half-acre left, zoned
for a coffin condominium,
tripling capacity by doubling
and quadrupling up the dead
who will lie in state in a gleaming black
U of granite, inner walls
faced with pink-veined marble
names upon names stacked and inscribed,
birthdays without deathdays
as the still-living sign up for limited space,
getting dibs on their final estate
on a first gone, first come basis.
(from a mutual friend of Jessica Jiang’s who suggested I stop by, said we had things in common like poetry and an artistic bent…)
Cheers,
Pamela Spiro Wagner
PS this poem will be included in my forth coming book of poems and art, LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS (June 2017, Green Writers Press and Sundog Poetry, Vermont)
I love it! Your name rings a bell. Thank you so much for stopping by! Jessica is very dear to me. Seems we do have in common what Jessica said –
Things That Never Made It Into Print...
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Thinking about cemeteries…
OVERPOPULATION
There are too many dead
bodies for the local cemetery,
children and children’s children
squeezed out of the family plot,
limbs and ribs encroaching as their bodies
fold unnaturally to conserve
precious space beneath the grass.
Others overlap in a boundary dispute
between neighbors
who have long since forgotten
their own quiet names.
A disturbance of heavy equipment —
backhoes and jack hammers –
jars the hard ground
as a new mausoleum goes up and up
in the last half-acre left, zoned
for a coffin condominium,
tripling capacity by doubling
and quadrupling up the dead
who will lie in state in a gleaming black
U of granite, inner walls
faced with pink-veined marble
names upon names stacked and inscribed,
birthdays without deathdays
as the still-living sign up for limited space,
getting dibs on their final estate
on a first gone, first come basis.
(from a mutual friend of Jessica Jiang’s who suggested I stop by, said we had things in common like poetry and an artistic bent…)
Cheers,
Pamela Spiro Wagner
PS this poem will be included in my forth coming book of poems and art, LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS (June 2017, Green Writers Press and Sundog Poetry, Vermont)
I love it! Your name rings a bell. Thank you so much for stopping by! Jessica is very dear to me. Seems we do have in common what Jessica said –