Cadaver
Jad Josey

I don’t want anyone to carry my casket.
I would rather be nailed to a tree. Summon
a thunderstorm if you can, or an
unlikely summer hail, even the heavy
late-season fog. Just not the wind,
please, not the goddamn wind carrying
those egrets higher than they meant to go,
secrets and regrets all aloft.
I want to come apart, to
undo and be undone, to slide
neither reckless nor resolved into
a thousand hungry mouths, to be
claimed by whatever is willing to
fight for the very last thing I can give.

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Jad Josey’s Comments

I have always been uneasy in a cemetery. All those bodies embalmed and sealed in caskets, potential energy trapped for decades or centuries. How many of us live our lives wrapped up tightly like that, afraid of the things that might spill out?

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