This cornhusk town
is embarrassing enough, I know,
without the promise—
more now the deadset,
ironclad certainty—
that a hayseed coroner
will smudge his name across
the last few lines
of your carefully perfected
pedigree and give it standing
like a Paris moon or a pastrami
dripped across rock-crusted ryes
a block from the stadium, or
opening nights retold for years
when greyed men laugh
into afternoon cocktails
on a Berkshire lawn.
As if dying alone weren’t
all the embarrassment a man
can stand, let alone a boy
urged into a tiled, steeled room
to watch or say goodbye
with powdery words and
newly-shy looks and
new understandings
that we don’t
and haven’t the time.
kensalzmann 