False Elegy
I sometimes feel as if my mother has died and I’m free to reminisce her final months.
Do I long, in this future, for her voice calling me “nickname”?
Has my loneliness become so thick I can freely describe the tragedy of her cardboard figure, flattened by circumstance and by these long years among the poor, heads shaking.
Cadmium thumbprints on the porcelain, on the faucets.
Folger’s Coffee tub of brushes soaking in turps.
Can I say that the dun hall of that Section 8 apartment was a chute to the slaughterman’s hammer?
Can I hang with a wire and a nail her last collage?
I can tell you that Charon is ferrying souls across the River Styx.
People careen precariously over gunwales cut from glossy magazines.
Lipsticked mouths scream in protest and fear as Charon smiles a red invite.
She’s overcrowded his craft but Charon doesn’t care.
Gold coins bulge his pockets.
I recognize as my own smile, his smile: ingratiating, satisfied, saline.
Clinique sherry gloss.
I know, too, that she knew I would know Charon’s face as my own future, Elmer’s glued into her cardboard craft.
The pole in his hands poling us towards this further shore.
