“Is this your political handbook?”
A man in mourning asks a
dead chap, perhaps an old
friend, a one-time lover or
long-term partner, pounding
the book at the dead man’s
chest. No answer is clearly
not good enough. The
chest-pumps grow in
intensity, thud! Thud!
THUD!! Eventually, the
one left living lets go,
releases the book onto
the dead man’s midriff.
Its pages will riffle a bit in
the undercurrents of the
afternoon breeze before
the earth that had been re
moved the day before gets
replaced, leaving it open to
a certain pair of pages that
might act as a sliding window
out through which a natural
scene could be witnessed
or a soul might escape.
