Samuel Piccone

Wake

A priest says the blood of our elders is heavenly
as a font of holy water. Someone’s idea of sacrament:
gin shooters in your casket. The Lord quells. My mother
weeps for the way death ulcered you with wings,
marked your linen with her failure to clean anything
of its humanness. Vanishing outward, she called it,
being your daughter. In the parking lot, an uncle bemoans
when I spill a tray of meatballs. Hells bells. The red snow
seems worth remembering. Not even a crow rouses
to the mess. There’s no one here to tell me
this is the stage of grief where nothing comes.