FROM SHAPE SHIFTER

Posting Graveyards

Somewhere, sometime, someone
delivers a letter to a graveyard
and pushes it through a mailbox
slot in the fence where it waits
until the breeze takes it
to graveside to tomb to mausoleum
for the dead to read,
to find what's in it for them.

No one knows
why anyone writes such a letter,
puts it into an envelope addressed
to whom it may concern, and drops it off
at the graveyard gate at sundown.
No one, that is, except the dead,
who are pleased
someone shows concern for them.

Everyone, except the dead,
must think it useless
to write a letter to anyone
who no longer exists.
Yet some things are so important
that they must be written down
even if they are never read
because if everyone
were to see themselves
as dead—smaller and clearer
as through the opposite
end of a telescope—
then we would all understand
the importance of writing
and hand delivering
our letters to a graveyard gate
and for patience
to await the favor of a reply.

Bottom Line Glimpsed On A #6 Six Bus

Potholes jolt the packed aisle
make me grab a pole and peek
over the shoulder
of the seated lady
who peers
into her saw-toothed paycheck envelope
and audits the residuals
from the takeout boxes
with a bleeding paper-cut index finger

Gross Pay                   $$$$$$$$$$
Tax Fed                       $$$$$$$$
F I C A                           $$$$$$
Medicare                     $$$$
Med Life                       $$$
Tax IL                           $$
Net                                 $

then presses
the ends of the envelope
with both hands
to open it wider and wider like a mouth
as she gapes into the

gap

calculating what must be let go
until the bite snaps shut
on thin pay and I think
if I had been able
to get her seat earlier
she would be standing here
the envelope safe
in her purse and her pain
laid away
until she got home.

Request To My Reader

Start your search by yourself
but then find me
in some lost anthology
that the library forgot to remainder
or in a chapbook
gifted by an eccentric aunt,
searching without knowing
how to find my special page
so you can put your fingers
to your throat and feel our pulse
as you read me out loud,

and I will give you the right
to slit my page, pull your blade
across the binding, and cut
your thumb, almost by accident,
careful that the blood spurt
won't blur the words you take,
learn by heart,
read to your closest friends,
so they will want these words,

will want to know about the dyed page
that you can say is our blood
in the flow of life
in mortality.