Balinese Cremation Documentary

I watch it flaming like meat or a building or wood

Or anything else I’ve ever seen burning.

Why not let go?

I think of the Catholics embalming time into marble,

And the Celts sinking slowly into moss-topped bog,

Then the sensible, anglicised service

Where we threw roses after my grandparents

And drove to a teatime wake behind a bus.

Back to the flames now,

The skull flaking and charring

Like a chain-smoked planet.

Why not let go?

We must, we must.

Jessa Brown

Jessa is a 24-year-old poet and creative writing MA student at UEA, whose work has been shortlisted for the Bloodaxe Challenge and published in The Mays anthology, the Young Writers anthology, the Oxford Review of Books, Acumen, Better Than Starbucks, and the Brixton Review of Books.