in air quotes "funeral" because Annie coined it a picnic:
troughs of tin foil and the weight of
disbelief under a pavilion on loan, a small welt bloomed
on my mandible - a strawberry moon -
I didn't get up to speak because I was a young girl-poet
in cupped-cheek retreat, besides,
Bill Lauf had already sung Sleep Friend, Sleep to sundry
water-logged faces, a final pinch
from distant kin, a slow-release gift to return to the body
between summer storms, howbeit
cruel and vertiginous. Reminder: fleeing leaves footprints.
//
Publication Credit: "bug bite at a funeral" first appeared in The Orange Rose Literary Magazine Issue 1
About the Creator
Erin Latham Shea
Co-Founder and EIC of Housebound Magazine
Assistant Poetry Editor at Wishbone Words
Managing Editor at The Roch Society
Instagram: @somebookishrambles
Bluesky: @elshea.bsky.social
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