DEATH MARCH
Carry her the way it has to hurt:
arms outstretched, tears caught.
Shrimp-curled, she weighs a shell’s worth.
Worse, no nurse lurks.
The flag’s furled in every way—
she whispers Go Away.
Reality singes.
A Cortez
she made you, no piker—
at every conquest, anger
you needed to guy
yourself to her bedside.
Muscles, pectoral or invented, signal
terror—you can’t put her down. Moral
imperative, that of social stigma
probably Darwinian, militia-
ready, beats its chest. The gods are plural
and cruel. You won’t weep at her funeral.
You wait, the dark doesn’t, it presses down.
You can’t possibly walk. Then it’s dawn.
By the same author
Auntie Deluvian and Alien On The Ark: Two by Two
Deep-time they called it when King Dumuzid the Shepherd