Weighing In
Weighing In
What makes these corpses so damn heavy?
—Dostoevsky
By Alice Friman
Even the great Russian
wondered what makes dead bodies
so leaden it takes six musclemen
to heft one box. You'd think
life having left would make flesh
less dense, the way a November leaf
floats, skips and scrapes along a cracked
sidewalk, weightless without its juice.
Of course there's the custom
of adding weight. A coin placed
on the dead one's tongue for fare
across the Acheron or two gold
pieces on eyelids to ensure sight
in the underworld. Consider Tut,
the boy king, whose tomb groaned
with groceries, games, a golden
hippopotamus, and a favorite chair,
plus four Canopic jars holding
the royal innards. Now, that's heavy.
Not taking chances and wanting
him prepared, I pressed a coin
in my father's hand for carfare.
It must have been a 1935 nickel,
a Buffalo nickel, making his box
so heavy. A hoof-kicking, two-ton
heave and shudder bellowing against
the sides, there where I laid my head
to say good-bye before the workmen
engaged the winches and lowered
him, inch by swaying inch, down.
Mother came equipped with her
own added weight. At the moment
of death, she clenched her teeth,
locked her jaws, and sucked in hard.
No last words, no rattle. Just that
hissing intake of breath, never
to be released. What was it
she dared to grab from the air
like a starving person a crust
to keep forever? What spring?
What blackberry summer?
All I know is, in her high hour,
she yanked the umbilical chain
and took a piece of me with her.
Alice Friman’s seventh collection is Blood Weather, LSU Press, 2019. Her last two
are The View from Saturn and Vinculum also from LSU which won the Georgia
author of the year in poetry. A recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and included in Best
American Poetry, she’s won many prizes and has been been published in Poetry,
Ploughshares, Plume, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, Poetry East,
Massachusetts Review, and many others. Her website is alicefrimanpoet.com.