Magazine
Susan Cossette: “Five Things I Will Do in Aegina”
Tony DeGenaro: “Flight Path”
John Grey: “On a Funeral Pyre”
Jeremy Jusek: “Prescriptions Written in Calligraphy”
Cindy Rinne: “Ghost Turkey”
Patricia Russo: “The Dead Time Traveler”
Waiting for Cremation
There is no perfection in death.
This is not the final picture of me,
the Greek chorus that was my family,
gazing down, hissing—
adulteress, lousy mother, heretic.
False poses, opaque makeup,
stiff hands coaxed loose by the mortician,
pink rosary beads strung in mute prayer
through pale wax fingers.
Florid lilies and heaps of hydrangeas
stand watch, alongside cheerful tulips.
I am visited, prayed over.
My head propped on a satin pillow,
the double chins more prominent,
the red lips stitched shut.
This is what everyone wanted.
I am finally mute.
Son, I tell you this while I still breathe--
Place the rough grey gravel shards of me
into a hummingbird-adorned urn,
into the damp warm earth, alongside my mother.
About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crow & Cross Keys, The Eunoia Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
Image Credit: John Rubens Smith “Two ornamental urns” Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
The Bones Know Mama orders beef shank for soup. I shuffle small feet on the butcher’s sawdust floor, wishing for that elusive marbled steak. Gramma Erzebet and I chop carrots and celery then quarter the parsnips and turnips. Dolgozz tovább, Zsuzsu. Keep working, Suzie. We watch the flesh bubble from the bones in her cast iron pot and know we will have supper for days. Later, the cats lick slick grey bones tossed on the yellow and green linoleum. Come May, Mama and I plant pink impatiens by the porch. Knees pressed into the newly warm earth, we discover discarded bones of slain birds and mice. My bones remember every place I go. Each taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound, every memory buried in spongy marrow.
About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
Image Credit: François Bonvin “Still Life” (1858) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
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The Persistence of Memory
If novelists die before they finish their stories
whole worlds evaporate.
Snowy trees at grey solstice sunset,
bare branches twisted with awful secrets.
Sad lines of cars inch home,
tiny ants high over the I-394 overpass.
Each with its own self-contained history.
Twenty or so mourners, some in person,
others on webcam, gather for a pandemic-age wake.
Families open Christmas presents
in front of the TV Yule log instead of a fireplace.
Everyone stops existing.
I am not afraid
because I write poetry
and once I finish a poem it is done.
The next one is a zygote in my mental ovaries
that hasn’t found a sperm cell to coax it to life.
Left behind like overripe cheese,
or ice cream melting in the sun.
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About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be,Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press),and After the Equinox.
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More by Susan Cossette:
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Image Credit: Marjory Collins “Washington, D.C. Salvage drive, Victory Program. Books and old lantern stored in District wholesale junk company warehouse” (1942) The Library of Congress. Public Domain
As It Ought To Be 