My Grandmother died and Jesus and Maria came for the body
in a black Chevy Astro Van.
They did a kind of comedy routine
delivered in black polyester
and Maria showed us the lump on her forehead
where an unhappy customer had connected
with a beer bottle the week before.
If the Holy Spirit rode with them, He waited in the Chevy.
Proving, I suppose,
that if Him exists he laughs at
I Love Lucy reruns
more than my Grandmother ever did.
Winter night in the desert.
I coil the intestines of my favorite dog
back into him like a rope.
We carry him in a pack up the Dolores River,
shooing invisible cows before us
in the moonless cold.
He was a herding dog, though not very good at it,
but the rock pile over his carcass
kept the spooky desert cows
off that hill for months.
Proving, I suppose,
there are some things one can improve at
after being squashed by a truck.
Once, I had big plans for my own carcass.
There was a certain slab of granite
and circling vultures over Cone Peak,
abalone shells and acorn mortars in the meadow.
Lovely but,
now I fret over who’s
gonna drive me there.
Proving, I suppose,
that we choose our own sentence
but not the punctuation.
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