Does one opening
possess moving
matter that, nice
under night, alone
inures the indisposed
masses to the epitaphs
on their own slab-stones?
Or is our courage more
of a collective fixation of
corsages in heaven; or up
our ancestors ashes with
spreadsheets full of family
trees and DNA tests?
Lost in these glib (at least
to her) thoughts, Mary
merrily grips her Groupon
for half off all of the answers.
She cuts quite the figure in
the Walgreens line (at least
to her).
The line being what it is,
and what it’s full of, she
absorbs all of the nowhere
into her, letting it dissolve
down to nothing. This is
where she spends half her
days and most of her nights,
dreaming of irrevocably
lapsed endorsements.
Can we leave it at that?
—John Ashbery
