All Change – Hannah Stone

– after Thanatologist David Kessler

 

There is a tribe which honours how death

changes everything.

 

When the bereaved family open their eyes

on the first full day of loss, they see this shared,

for, overnight, every household in the village

has moved something out into the yard –

a chair, a table, any belonging.

 

My urban, northern community pretends

the only difference is absence. We hoist

the soiled Parker Knoll into a skip, bury

unwanted stuff in a landfill.

We hold quiet ceremonies in cold buildings

and, after a decent interval, ‘move on.’

 

‘Late’ is what the dead are called

in cultures where they know how to be present.

My mother is not yet ‘late,’ but she has missed

her time to shine, and all the furniture

in her brain is being re-arranged

round spaces where her memory once lived.

 

‘How long will I grieve?’ we ask the therapist.

‘How long will your loved one be dead?’ she replies.

 

 

CEPHALOPODYSPHORIA – Mathias Gerlach

 

the very first time, i am 12 years old.

it starts in my chest, beneath my lungs,

the space between my diaphragm and heart

quaked by hiccups. then something bigger.

 

the scientific name for giant squid is Architeuthis.

their tentacles grow back when you sever them;

it’s one way only – the cut arm withers and dies,

but a new one sprouts in its place over and over.

 

i taste blood and kelp like fishmongers’ air,

and my hands grasp the bulge in my throat.

brine in my mouth, my nose, eyes and ears:

a reversed children’s rhyme before i retch.

 

a giant squid’s suckers are lined with teeth;

they have three-feet-long prehensile penises.

giant squids exhibit sexual dimorphism.

their only natural predators are sperm whales.

 

 

weeds can be beautiful, too – Leah Barron

 

there used to be flowers in my ribcage,

vines entwined with my veins.

my body was a terrarium:

it kept me warm.

i kept my garden growing,

watered the wallflowers that

consumed me. i was

magnificent, but

 

now those wallflowers wilt.

there is ivy climbing my limbs;

i can't bring myself to cut it back.

my bones are more rotten than alive.

i am the body they forgot to bury.

forget-me-nots are forged in my brain,

but i don't want to remember.

 

what were once willow vines

are dry-damp branches

cracking under the weight of my footsteps.

i am not a home for flowers;

i am not the greenhouse i once was.

the garden inside of me is overgrown.

i am wearing dry rot antlers. these

wildflowers and weeds

belong to me.

i am the patron saint of what is meant to be.