Page 28 - WTP Vol. VIII #4

21
Cleopatra Mathis
In White River Junction, an Invitation to the Death Café
They told me to bring my body down— poor body ready to go, sad me in the body. When I want to call it quits,
where else to go but the Death Café.
A genuine skeleton meets me at the door. They’ve got cake on skeleton plates. Strangers line up to celebrate—skeletons gone hysteric in the Death Café.
Bully you, says the body, I get to call the shots. Life is a tiny sideways step: can’t stop
this St. Vitus dance, you the caught-up dangling marionette,
such a martyred little blink. A twitch gone haywire ties her up in knots, twists her hand behind her back.
But hand wants to be a little fish: hand is a thousand minnows trapped in the current, fingers running sideways.
Hand is the strobe in the water, underneath it all,
another body dancing in the Death Café.
How to figure what to wear?
Hang her in the closet for another day.
Hold her down, dress her up. Ants in her pants. Some worm in there, wiggling.