October Is A Carry-Out

March is the viewing room in the funeral home

the scent of white lily sprays and regret waft along chestnut walls.

Hovering over saints on prayer cards,

anger signs the guest book and joins the line.

June is Tuesday afternoon, swelter at the strip club.

It peddles the promise of fire and fever, as

melting older dancers wax through summer, the blush

seeping from their single-pane glass - outside to autumn.

October is a carry-out and its faded paint-chipped sign,

The door creaks. The bell dings. Order. Payment. Wait.

Thin chromed rod shelves hawk other hungers

Grape cigarillos and crinkling two-packs

of expiring aspirins - aspirins

whose hour has not yet come.

The door creaks. The bell dings. Crunching gravel on the

pockmarked parking lot, red-blue-green Christmas lights dangle

beckoning festive commercials of the gift-wrapped generosity

whose hour has not yet come.