The Man at his Mothers Funeral By Ellyssa Pearce

It’s raining and they are in a cemetery.

A circle of people surround a box

hovering above a hole. A mound of

dirt sits next to the circle. They hold flowers

and the man in black holds a book. They can’t

see her but she is there. Asleep? They could

say that. Nobody knows what to say but

 he knows. The one standing in jeans and a

 jacket closest to the casket knows. The man

 in black asks for a voice. The one in jeans

 and a jacket remembers. He remembers

and speaks. I remember her sitting on

the porch in her rocking chair, inviting

me to play cards when she knows I should be

 in school. I think back on the conversations

about our country, the family, and

what she loved to do when she was my age.

 We laughed even when she was lying in

 bed with a nurse at her side. The young cry

 knowing what has befallen their loved elder.

 But he does not. Not to be strong for his

children but because he does not think she

is gone. She’s not gone. She lives in albums

and in favorite objects she left behind.

To me she lives in the playing cards,

 a rocking chair and the laughing we once shared.

 He nods his head and throws in a rose.

Just an afterthought to go along but

Perhaps remembering is the key to

Keep oneself breathing in the minds of us. 

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Men at My Father’s Funeral

BY WILLIAM MATTHEWS

The ones his age who shook my hand   

on their way out sent fear along   

my arm like heroin. These weren’t   

men mute about their feelings,

or what’s a body language for?

And I, the glib one, who’d stood

with my back to my father’s body

and praised the heart that attacked him?   

I’d made my stab at elegy,

the flesh made word: the very spit

in my mouth was sour with ruth

and eloquence. What could be worse?   

Silence, the anthem of my father’s   

new country. And thus this babble,   

like a dial tone, from our bodies.