I have been asked to edit a small section of poets on death. First David, the editor, said young, then he said forget that. I went to poets I know who are always good and would say yes in their strange collective strength. Then he said write an introduction. None of this is hard work for me. It’s just writing emails to your friends and reading poetry. I don’t know what else I do.

Here’s some very quick liner notes on this production. All of us of course are dying at this moment, coincidentally, so you couldn’t have asked for a better group. Ama is music and tragedy and eloquence. Ashley is in the room. Eileen couldn’t resist, the moment was so good. The longest poem, Laura’s, is always rich and funny while everything around us is unspeakably bad. Sallie’s is about what you do while it’s happening and it is always happening.

Meanwhile, we have Gaza.

By Ama Birch

Crying for the sea mink
An American casualty
Of war. Fur traders.
Pet a. Pet a. Pet a.
17 million soldiers
Gone. Too soon.
They rise. Rise.
Mary don’t you
Weep. Martha don’t
You moan. Suicide. Genocide.
Something wicked comes
This way. The culling
Has already begun.
They should be in gaol.
A trumpet plays “Taps.”
Now some of the dead
Float away in little cages.
Made of raw meat and brandy.
Helios’ radiant crown.
Sun chariot take us away.

By Ashley D. Escobar

everything is tentative
even when penciled
in with pen      learned
a banana has a hundred
calories           I changed
my mind art is full of
citations I’ll try to go
to everything   before
my mouth    decays
nothing but poetry
in a waiting room
with dead branches
hanging          outside

By Sallie Fullerton

I remember the day he pulled left
and got off the information superhighway,

that varicose coast where I
I have hovered for years
summoning curiosity with a trick
hair-thin lasso.

And my father spent the final days of his life
plugged in, which is to say
he spent the final days of his life listening

to science fiction novels in an endless series
through iPhone speakers, and we heard

garbled signals from the edge
of the solar system as he zoomed

down the highway, oiled
by endless language.

I imagine picking a word out from the air
as when I fall asleep to radio:

intergalactic solar storm,
political playbook, unsayable tragedy
in my ear.

My education has prepared me to sit like a receiver
at the menu of my own curiosity.

Death too has a gibberish to it.
Somewhere in the depths
of history, a voice rattles:
“Do not be scared. Get in the car.”

Late at night, with my ear
to whatever the world feels moved to say,
I try to drift into it,
the world, I hope to learn.

By Laura Henrikson

my husband, my baby,
and i are in the waiting
room at the vet because
our cat has stopped eating
in a few hours she will be dead
we will soon learn

across the street ads
for products to protect
your brain from your cell phone

there are channels now
dedicated to one show looped
episode to episode all day
and night, day and night
useless with neither
chronology or progression

in the waiting room such
a channel played endless
fear factor

it was a special installment
in which all contestants
were twins

first twins dropped
each other from a helicopter
into a lake, the objective
was not clear
but the second challenge
was unambiguous

twins took turns
gnawing the meat
from a cow’s preserved body
and then they swam in
a trench thick with organs
and blood still holding
the meat in their mouth

on the other side, a juicer
awaited, and into it they spat
the meat, fed it through
the metal grinder, slowly
filling a cup

they repeated this rite
as many times as it took
to fill the cup and then
they drank the juice

i asked the man at the desk
if we could please turn off
fear factor and he did
offering the remote to us
to pick something new
which we didn’t do

called back from waiting
the vet explained that all her systems
were shutting down which meant
our cat was dying already

my baby laughed and smiled
because these words to her
were musical sounds
the vet’s consoling expression
another beautiful face
for a baby to look at and
feel inescapable joy

by Eileen Myles

I saw Lee Miller
standing
in Hitler’s
bathroom.

Now
shoot her in
the head
shoot her in
the heart
Kill the child
who did it

Kill everyone. ♦