Poetry Magazine
At the End of Life, a Secret
Everything measured. A man twists
a tuft of your hair out for no reason
other than you are naked before him
and he is bored with nakedness. Moments
before he was weighing your gallbladder,
and then he was staring at the empty space
where your lungs were. Even dead, we still
say you are an organ donor, as if something
other than taxes outlasts death. Your feet
are regular feet. Two of them, and there is no
mark to suggest you were an expert mathematician,
nothing that suggests that a woman loved
you until you died. From the time your body
was carted before him to the time your
dead body is being sent to the coffin,
every pound is accounted for, except 21 grams.
The man is a praying man and has figured
what it means. He says this is the soul, finally,
after the breath has gone. The soul: less than
$4,000 worth of crack—21 grams—
all that moves you through this world.
This poem first appeared in New England Review.
Source: Poetry (November 2012).
Biography
Reginald Dwayne Betts is author of the memoir A Question of Freedom (Avery, 2009) and the poetry collection Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010). He is a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow and 2011 Radcliffe Fellow.
Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Living, Death, The Body, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Religion, The Spiritual
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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