Excellent poem, Ken. It weds the devastating and the goofy as well as the
marketing and love-torture of death, thus calling up all sides of our own
like experiences.
Your straightforward, honest telling brings an immediate relief, I think,
because it *shows* us those butted-against-each-other irreconcilables we've
had to face at some time after all of our years of avoidance, but 'til this
poem we've not had it 'in our faces' to evoke our catharses.
Your artful picture-giving and hearable reactions thread and crown the poem
[fish swallowing fish; Sarah Bernhardt's travelling coffin; unlined
unfinished pine; 'her tucked into the ground'; wife's laughs; Henny
Youngman's jokes].
Two suggestions: Use "My" as the first word, replacing "The"---so we can
focus on fewer kids and your closest kin, and so that we can easily work out
that the last stanza's Jake and Ben are your kids. Second suggestion:
"halakhic" and "traife" are outside my experience, so for me it reads like
"blank" and "blank"---and I'd love to know the ironies they may suggest!
Best,
Judy
2009/10/14 Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> BUYING THE CASKET
> February 26, 1992
>
> The kids are gawking at the array, a roomful of
> boxes arranged left to right by ascending price
> (I think "Each fish swallows the smaller")
> a trip from Medicaid halakhic to *traife* elegance,
> from unlined unfinished pine to a casket fit
> for Meyer Lansky or Dutch Schultz.
>
> I'm a bit--no, a lot--dazed and slightly crocked,
> for mom died four hours ago, yet I, the only begotten,
> am required by the immutable forces of faith and custom
> to have her tucked into the ground before the next day ends.
> So my wife does all the business, laughs--but yes, me too--at the
> owner's Loosen Up The Mourners terrible jokes,
> the greatest schticks since Henny Youngman.
> Take my mother. Please. For Christ's sake. Oh God.
>
> Jake and Ben leave the casket showroom only slightly speechless,
> imagining people laying down in the various boxes
> as though to try them out like Sarah Bernhardt
> who traversed the world with her own coffin
> as a comfort and reminder of her future.
>
> KTW/10-14-09
>
> (The subject header: a disturbing weekend and week in which I was subjected
> to domestic violence and am anticipating becoming homeless. And yet I
> write?)
>
> --
> ----------------------------
> Ken Wolman
>
> http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com
> http://opensalon.com/blog/kenneth_wolman
> http://wearethecure.org/friends/cids-memory-p-394.html
>
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