print previewback DIANE SEUSS
As a child I ate and mourned.
Now I will not eat. I will not mourn.
Bowls of glistening peaches.
Bowls of them, I tell you.
Golden, with a menstrual stain where the pit was pulled away.
On one of my daily strolls into the next-door cemetery
I met a hog snake, which even then was put on earth
to represent the antithesis of the working stiff.
The funeral director set a house trailer
on the cemetery edge to serve as a chapel
for grievers. It was cold in there,
the paneling warped.
A cheap box of tissues on the card table.
I slid one out and balled it up, stuck it in my mouth.
The gravedigger, his shovel carried over his shoulder like a musket.
I was pure of soul. I was.
Chosen to play the angel in every drama about God.
I had things in the right order:
i.e. the body is but a playhouse for the soul, all that. 
A Poet Came to Town
As a child I ate and mourned.
It’s Like This