Casket Parts
by Alec Montalvo
You researched casket parts nomenclature on the internet,
just so you can weave me a sweater from the overlay skirt
of coffins. We went mudding in St. Louis on our hands
and knees, leaving wet footprints on the sidewalks
tracking all the way back to Grasmere. We walked all about
the overpasses. We danced on the guardrails and spat
at the cars that passed under in coats of blur. Sometimes
we would catch each other’s eyes through the reflection of sewage
water puddles. I would pack the earl grey tea bags and you
would get your hair caught in the barbed-wire tree branches
that surrounded the clearing in the woods. I am tired of replaying
your memories on the Super-8 tapes. You once told me
my words would come back to haunt me. I saw my words rise
from out the casket, shove their fist from out the grave mound,
limp across the field and pound against my cellar door.
They wrote themselves in claw marks dug throughout the wood.
That’s not our wedding song you hear, it’s our séance.
Alec Montalvo is an emerging poet. His work has previously appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, Caesura, The Serpentine, and featured on the front page of PoetrySoup.com. He lives in Staten Island, New York and works in Brooklyn as a High School English Teacher where he teaches Creative Writing. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Poetry.
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