Love Letter to a Dead Body
by Jake Skeets
published in Boston Review, 2018
we lay each other down in the burr and sage bottles jangle us awake cirrhosis moon for eye
memories cough our young fists up trying to set ourselves on fire dressing ourselves in black smoke
just as our cousins did one by one after the other rising pure blue in June
let drunktown rake up the letters in their names lost to bone let horses graze where remains are found
and you kiss me to shut me up my skin bruise dark in the deep
come morning the leaves will replace themselves with meadowlarks names shiver in the bottle jangle still cockshut in larkspur
you will see your cousin and uncle lying next to you
every time I blink we become ghosts bottle-dark and white-eyed
among the grasses horses probably still there
