My Sister's Funeral

Since there was no mother for the peach tree we did it

all alone, which made the two of us closer

though closeness brought its loneliness, and it would

have been better I think sometimes to be sterile

from the start just to avoid the pain

which in my life this far has lasted seventy

years for I am in love with a skeleton

on whose small bones a dress hung for a while,

on whose small skull a bit of curly hair

was strung, and what is dust I still don’t know

since there was no mother to turn to then and ask

what else was she wearing, did she have on shoes,

and were the two trees from Georgia, and was it

true somebody said the other peach

should have died instead of her; and I could

imagine the nose going first though forty years later

the trees were still there and not as big as you’d think;

and it was my cousin Red with the flabby lips

who said it, he had red eyes, a red monstrosity,

a flabby body, half the house was filled with

male cousins, they were born in rooms a

short distance from the rats, I can’t remember

which ones had the accents nor what his

Hebrew name was, nor his English.