Jessamine O'Connor: The Most Moral

Today I watched a man

rolled casually off a roof

by the boot of a uniformed soldier

who nudges him over and over

like this man is some object

he’s found

His friends look on

while he shoves with his foot

until the slack body flops,

bends back

and drops.

The soldiers amble off,

disinterested in the fall

or its impact

But in a minute they return,

this time they’re swinging

a second man

like a black hammock –

one, two, and he’s clear -

slumped down the side

of this building

we’re watching

Then a third, kicked,

hit and thrown

from the same roof

and judging by the energy invested

this time, it looks to me like he’s alive,

or was

I can watch this

from several angles

so it’s not difficult

to judge, though some papers say

these were men, acting

uncharacteristically,

their army will investigate -

as if this is not policy -

so the bulldozer waiting underneath

to bury the evidence

must have been

circumstantial,

but anyone with eyes

can see an endless skyline

of rooves

just like these.

Jessamine O’Connor lives on the Sligo Roscommon border. Her collection ‘Silver Spoon’ is published by Salmon Poetry, she has chapbooks with Nine Pens Press and the Black Light Engine Room press, and she is an editor with Drunk Muse Press. www.jessamineoconnor.com

J.R. Solonche: Funerals

I need to go to a funeral.

I haven’t been to a funeral

in a while. I don’t remember

the last one I went to. I need

to go to one so I don’t forget

what death is all about.

I need to meet people who

for years were part of my life

but are now only part of my past.

I need to meet the relatives

and friends and colleagues who

have been only names brought

up in conversations. I need to

go to one more funeral before

I die. I don’t want the deceased

to be a friend but a third cousin

I met once at another funeral

or a neighbor I waved to those five

or six times during the years we

lived on the same road, all those

forty-five or forty-six years. I need

to go to his open casket funeral.

I need to see his face for once.

Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of over 40 books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.