Undertaking
“It is certainly strange
that you have ignored our messages”
the rental car agency Sixt
keeps writing me, twice a month for years,
“and have not taken
care of this outstanding debt, which is
currently far past due”—
And I’m arranging again my father’s funeral,
carnations and memorial cards
for the pews, the white-silk open
casket I refused to look into
(though my grandmother announced “He’s on view!”)
and I’m grumbling Why does he need another memorial,
wasn’t one almost fifty years ago
enough? He glares at me, baleful again, I remember
that look, he must think
it certainly strange
I have ignored his bill on bill on nightmare
bill red-marked PAST DUE . . .
Till, half-dreaming, I remember
next week’s his anniversary
of dying, and it’s
48 years alive/
48 years dead
March 2, have you
forgotten, he’s still saying, doesn’t that
anti-birthday ante-what
deserve some peculiarized
rite of passage, some
commemoration more than these
hectic repetitive nightmares riddled
with unquenchable obligation,
unsourceable guilt?
The past is due
DATE OF DAMAGE: UNKNOWN
TIME OF DAMAGE: UNKNOWN
CAUSE OF DAMAGE: UNKNOWN -what
kind of damage claim is this, these
€1,370 bimonthly bills, am I to be dunned
without end for such
a miniscule scratch
that blurs to indiscernable
when I try to pinch-and-zoom
the evidence shot. The past is due
to go on go on, and surely
the dead cannot be
tasked
with unburying
the dead, much less
themselves—
My father, like
a transitive verb
at last impacting its
lost object:
stare
into his stare at he demands
his return, pay
his future what has so long been
its damaged claim, its
scrutable due.
