Sestina (Very Much A Draft)

Took to long to finish the sestina, but I haven't finished much of anything this year, so I'm glad I did.


Visiting

Whenever you go to talk to the Dead
you always meet at the Dead's home table
where, of course, the Dead sit, attended by walking dolls,
who are tearless but tired from moving their own lips
to voice whatever is on the Dead's mind,
holding on tho the Dead's unresponsive hand.

The dolls don't know better than to hold the Dead's hands,
brittle like half-melted ice, already the color of dead.
The dolls insist to you that they don't mind
as they bring a bowl of soup to the table,
the first meal in weeks to touch the dead's lips.
The Dead's cabinets are as bare as if made for a house of dolls.

Ironic, then, that it's up to the dolls
to fill the shelves, to fill the Dead's hand
with a spoon for the soup, then rasie it to the Dead's lips.
But don't try to eat along with the Dead.
That's the (also ironic) sole rule at the table.
Be late or be loud, the Dead will not mind,

except, that is, when you don't act as dead. Mind
you, the Dead accepts the real-life mimicry of the dolls,
who sit on the Dead's side of the table
like stuffed doys on rocking chairs, waiting to be handed
over to the atic, left for always-dead,
maybe touched years later with reflexive, indifferent lips.

Eventually they move. The lips
of the Dead, I mean, move them to do more than mind
the stream of soup crawlling warily down a dead
throat. At this point, the Dead waves the dolls
away--it's so instinctive, the dolls move now without a hand
needing to be raised. Now it's just you and the dead at the table,

and the Dead asks you to put all the news on the table.
What accolades about the Dead are coming from others' lips?
What new poems have been inspired by the Dead's umoving hand.
The Dead wants to be on everyone's mind,
the belle of the ball, the prize China Doll.
The Dead, as you've guessed, is not quite fully dead

and gone, but rather dead and still here, at the table,
sustaining on tears of dolls who pray and fear when the Dead moves lip.
It's the Dead and Gone who mind manners, stop trying to move a lving hand across a page.