owen mcleod

Dayshift At The Place Of Safekeeping

Flowers heat up in a truck at the edge of the cemetery. A hairdo in the parking lot looks like Easter basket grass.

I can’t deliver another wreath to the tent. It’s impossible to communicate with grievers. Victory doesn’t feel like this.

Still, “Have a good one” and “It is what it is” would be totally inappropriate. What is anything anyway?

We are not dust. We are not children. We are not God’s creatures. We are not going home.

Rivers flow into the ocean? Big deal. Slumped in a chair on the Astroturf fringe, an old man sleeps like a baby.

caroline chavatel