Abecedarian for a Sale on Cremation
by Rita Mookerjee
A flier for funerary services appears in my parents’ mail-
box. There’s a life insurance policy on the side
crammed in like a bad appetizer special. Walking
down Lincoln Way I see a sale for cremation.
Every hair on my arm stands up. It’s buy one get one
free, I kid you not. And this is what it has come to:
giddy capitalists chomping at the bit, ready to brand our
hell and sell it to us like we’re the lucky ones.
I wonder if they ever lump the bodies together. Do they
just double-stuff the incinerator for the married couples
knowing they can make them spoon without it being
lurid or in generally poor taste; less gauche and
more whimsical like two ashen Pompeii lovers knotted
neatly and shielding one another from a blast of doom.
Only the lucky die by volcanic eruption. There is no
planning or preparation no tearful days
quietly spent thumbing paperwork, ignoring the phone.
Rifling through photo albums with mouthfuls of dread
sickening and powdery like chalk. I do not want
to brace myself for my parents’ deaths though I have an
underlying suspicion they’ll outlive me with all their
vegetables and constant exercise which is probably
why I can’t picture them dead or even dying. They’re
xenolithic fragments that withstand wind and time so
yes, we are laughing at the death coupon flier. My mom
zests a lemon and cackles hurry up, time to die.
Rita Mookerjee (she/her) the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Fellow at DePaul University. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Hobart Pulp, New Orleans Review, the Offing, and the Baltimore Review. Follow her @RitaMookerjee