ELEGIZING
by Maria Isabelle Carlos
in memory of Auntie Edwina
How predictably my mind caroms
over an image of death: the clichéd crow
still as stuffed in a gutter-puddle of leaves
ripened by rain, feathers glossy as if
freshly-preened for the occasion, as if
a suit of shiny fabric pressed and creased
by an exacting mortician. One upturned eye
holds a crescent sheen in her unwavering
gaze.
I cast the dead crow into tragedy
and already the melodrama simmers, the poem
a meditative monologue to the dulcet tune
of a solo-piano soundtrack—No, I think,
something dry, something satirical,
resistant to metaphor—I festoon the claws
on each foot, unsheathed, slate-gray,
with language, then strip adverbs, sculpt
lines, braid narratives, decouple stanzas,
betting on a volta
through which she might
surface in the poem—what I’ve wanted
all along: her hands flying to her mouth
to feed herself a laugh, or the pot-lid that taught me
patience, and the small rain it made over
sliced eggplants steaming in soy sauce and water,
while she rolled lumpia at the table, cooing me
to leave it alone…
Do you find my grieving
irreverent? The poem is a room I build, hoping she
might stay. Or the poem is the door, is the wizened
oval table, is the creamy-colored curtain shifting
in the room’s singular window. I can never
get it right. I circle death like an omen, pulsing,
to draw more death toward me, to write my way
into its starry-jawed throat, praying this time,
this time, I might hear her laugh from across
the creaky table once again.
The poem is a lamp
the eye carries when stilled. The poem is no one
in the room to see through the window what has just
lifted from a tree, its flight unbearably inhuman.
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