Day After Day of the Dead

—“mu” forty-eighth part— “While we’re alive,” we kept repeating. Tongues, throats, roofs of our mouths bone dry, skeletons we’d someday be... Panicky masks we wore for effect more than effect, more real than we’d admit... No longer wanting to know what soul was, happy to see shadow, know touch... Happy to have sun at our backs, way led by shadow, happy to have bodies, block light... Afternoon sun lighting leaf, glint of glass, no matter what, about to be out of body it seemed... Soon to be shadowless we thought, said we thought, not to be offguard, caught out. Gray morning we meant to be done with, requiem so sweet we forgot what it lamented, teeth turning to sugar, we grinned • Day after day of the dead we were desperate. Dark what the night before we saw lit, bones we’d eventually be... At day’s end a new tally but there it was, barely begun, rock the clock tower let go of, iridescent headstone, moment’s rebuff... Soul, we saw, said we saw, invisible imprint. No one wanted to know what soul was... Day after day of the dead we were deaf, numb to what the night before we said moved us, fey light’s coded locale... I fell away, we momentarily gone, deaf but to brass’s obsequy, low brass’s croon begun. I fell away, not fast, floated, momentary mention an accord with the wind, day after day of the dead the same as day before day of the dead... “No surprise,” I fell away muttering, knew no one would hear, not even me • We wore capes under which we were in sweaters out at the elbow. Arms on the table, we chewed our spoons... Mouthing the blues, moaned an abstract truth, kept eating. The dead's morning-after buffet someone said it was. Feast of the unfed said someone else... What were we doing there the exegete kept asking, adamant, uninvited, morose... Elbows in the air like wings, we kept eating, rolled our eyes, kept shoveling it in... Day after day of the dead we were them. We ate inexhaustibly, ate what wasn't there, dead no longer dying of thirst, hung over, turned our noses up to what was ________________ It was me, we were it, insensate, sugared sweat what what we drank tasted like. Even so, the tips of our tongues tasted nothing, we sipped without wincing... We ate cakes, we ate fingernail soup, a new kind of gazpacho, no one willing to say what soul was... Knucklebone soufflé we ate, we ate gristle, eyes we took from flies flying backward a kind of caviar, none of us wanting to say what soul was