Proto-Post-Memento Mori
by Stephen Massimilla
Sparrows brawling in the eaves…
Like those of dreaming poets,
filmy membranes of eyes and bellies
(of two fetal carcasses
that the parents in their spat must have kicked
down to my doorstep) were rolling. Rapid Eye—
and bowel—Movements: fatty blue and bubblegum
stomachs already pregnant with maggots
buzzed electric in the mid-spring sun.
*
That afternoon and evening, and after I was dead
to what I’d eaten, the sky kept churning its goose-
flesh, hints of worry eating my in-
sides out. I dreamed of that long winter night
in the hospital: I swear I woke up
to lenses exploding in my rib cage, tentacles
scrambling for exits. I closed my lids in disbelief,
afraid to see white rubber tubes joining me
to beeping machines. “Get over it,” the night
nurse whispered, not lifting her eyes from her paper.
*
This morning, no more news on my doorstep.
No paper. Not even a hint of Eberhart’s groundhog.
Just peeling planks where I’d recently studied two tiny skulls
and crossed femurs from nature’s foul rag-and-bone shop,
thinking I could use the images—
frameworks to commemorate open throats
of things with the guts to cry out—
only to discover that even they
were soft enough to be consumed
from the inside out.
Read more poetry by Stephen Massimilla in our poetry issue.
Stephen Massimilla is a poet, critic, professor, and painter. His co-authored 500-page volume, Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. His latest collection, The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat, was selected in the Stephen F. Austin University Press Prize contest. He received the Bordighera Poetry Prize for Forty Floors from Yesterday (CUNY); the Grolier Poetry Prize for Later on Aiaia, a Salmon Run National Book Award runner-up citation for Almost a Second Thought, selected by X.J. Kennedy; a Van Rensselaer Award, selected by Kenneth Koch; and other awards. Massimilla has recent poems in AGNI, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Literary Review, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, The Southern Poetry Review, Tampa Review, and Verse Daily; and his work has appeared hundreds of other publications. He holds an MFA in Writing and a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He teaches at Columbia University and the New School.