I am all right. Everyone else is out there
crying and going on, but I have gotten
in here with my nice dead grandmother.
They have her on a gurney, legs
sticking out of the sheet, the red stem
from her thigh to the canister
on the floor.
Getting her ready for the
funeral, honey, taking the blood out.
We’re going to put this clear stuff in
before she’s cold, so she’ll be beautiful.
Already she is, clean as stone.
I am all right here. I am happy
enough in her little room with the
smells, even after the scrubbing.
My hand on her arm, so they
have to say dead again, and they say it
exactly the way I knew it, something you
check out and pass on by, dead
robin, dead rabbit, dead worm, nothing
to turn back for but a kiss
on her mouth, which is flat.
She can’t feel that, the one in
suspenders says, but somewhere, she knows.
Somewhere begins separating itself,
stretching itself into the field
behind the house, into the tall
grass, the things to be found
in it—the mole holes to China, the zillion
little stone eyes of Africa turned up
to me. I am holding my
breath between continents, while she lies
pinned to the center, wearing
her glasses. If I stretch out my hand,
the air is a faceless body
and I am standing here
like a dumb bunny with my hand, pulling
it back into my memory.