There’s always finger food
after a funeral, tasty cakes

and the like, but nobody’s
wrapping dinner rolls in napkins

so I fill mine, bulk up my chest
and thigh pockets. Sure,

my refrigerator has become a bag
of baby carrots, curry paste,

the door full to the gunwales
with capless condiment bottles;

a third straight cold shower
means the boiler is empty of oil

and I can’t be bothered
to fill it up—I’m not pretending

any longer that I know how
to handle important things

like money or death
as I have proven to myself

over again—shivering
hands cupped to my chest,

they fill up with glassy weight
until I let these cold wave

packets of bathwater fall
to my claw foot tub bowl,

dense slap resounding
in the metal for a pleasing second,

petering out just as quickly.
This seems to me

like a small form of death;
the same applies to falling asleep

with food in the oven, spilled
beer bottle as a bedmate.

Do we all wake up thinking
we’ve pissed the bed?

Does anyone else smell something
burning? In Indonesia,

when someone dies they tether
a chicken to a stick, erect

the setup near the crematorium
because they believe its head

is a sponge drinking in the malicious
ghosts that always seem to loiter

when we burn bodies.
I try not to wear death’s feathers

like a cape. Instead I hold
my mouth open to its rising ash,

but this doesn’t feel like wisdom.
Keeping evil spirits

inside a pet hen still seems
like a better way of mourning.

You don’t even have to eat the thing.
If you let it, it will keep laying

egg after egg after egg—