DECEMBER 21ST, 2002

It’s said it takes seven years

to grow completely new skin cells.

To think, this year I will grow

have touched.

STERILE

I’ve always pictured him going strangely—blowing up

in a truck somewhere, laughing too hard just before

it happened, his tiny beer gut fueling the inferno.

But this: the dainty hospital gown, his unsocked feet

pointing out the end of a baby-blue blanket.

He doesn’t move when we walk into the room, doesn’t

stir when I call out softly.  I wonder if he’s already dead.

I touch his arm, the hastily inked army-tattoo of a mushroom

on his left bicep.  I look down at his pale face,

press down on the tattoo, hope hard that nothing happens.

FUNERAL MUSIC

Mondays are the days when it is composed

in a closet or a spare casket while the composer

weeps silently, a sorrowful score playing out

in his head- a chorus of whimpering strings

or reverent organ pipes conducive to images

of elderly men sitting on pristine couches covered

with giant doilies, clutching hands of remaining

immediate family, eyes fixed on familiar grey

curls that look strangely blue under such conditions.

I will have none of this.  My funeral music

will be filled with bawdy trombones and saucy

clarinet glissandos.  It will sound like a carnival,

and it will be composed on a Friday, at some

rambunctious bar, as bottles clink around me

and tenders pour a liquid death into small

glasses by my conducting hands.

Bio: Brett Elizabeth Jenkins currently lives in Indiana with her brother and her cat, Marie DeSalle.  She has her MFA from Bennington.   Look for her poems in Anderbo, PANK, ditch, G.U.D., Writers' Block, and elsewhere.  To contact her, email brett.e.jenkins@gmail.com.