Shattered, Saddiq Dzukogi

ALIKI BARNSTONE

Funeral Anagrams

for the poet Monica Aileen Hand

I don’t give a damn the undertaker made you pretty, an aim you didn’t pursue. Am I mean? I couldn’t go to your funeral, no, I couldn’t accept you lain

in open casket was a fitting coda of your life, your death cleaned from your face, yet not an icon of you in the sky, maybe an idol, your hands enlaced

in prayer, posed in the lie you acceded to a creed, your skin in candlelight cold and bronze, chemically enhanced. I didn’t want to join in, drop a clod on your casket. One day your carved name

will be illegible, your stone lichened. Your embalmed body can bear no likeness to your focus and calm as you Coptic-stitched a book, your sure hand. You said of this last one you made for me:

“The signature papers are an experiment, each I painted with different media.” I hold its beauty, keepsake of you, recalling you inclined toward your next poem, your next line set down as if the linen returned the ink to its homeland.

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