Art by Jess Nguyen
He’s the sort of chap who walks at right angles
Around the well-lit, open plan morgue
With coffee machines and touch screens
And table tennis tables—
All for the comfort of the corpses!
Promising young cadavers pass him
Mapping their daily Etch-a-Sketch paths
In tailored, Italian breathable three-piece coffins
He is of the English persuasion;
Not Armani but Burberry clings to his cold skin
As a child he would pick blueberries in the summer
And eat them and be happy and–
And eat more berries
Now he carries a (not very) brief case
Of dying light by his side
But when he dreams, it is of berries
And the ocean and sex and snow
The dead cannot dream like so
He does not carry a scythe
He does love his wife
He does