An Afterlife
       

The mummy unwound her bandages, inserted her organs, false eyes, and went out for a bite.

They make a lovely spinach gnocchi ac Jimmy's, she thought, and headed toward the river.

The sky was porcine, fat and pink.

She wore a cardigan, rope sandals, and itchy blue socks

She passed Monsieur Phot's Pho, smelled lemongrass, heard moon lutes, and almost walked in, but no, Jimmy's, the lovely spinach, the gnocchi.

She stopped to listen to a Cyclops play a tango on a cello.

Her face was reflected in his wrap-around shade.

She wished she had brought a sharp pair of scissors co trim her sutures.

I'm not getting any older, she thought, and tossed a dollar into his cowboy hat.

All cities are translations of other cities.

Here, she was still tongue-tied so she hid in the gaps between source and commentary. Community?

She liked cowls with ears, magazine subscriptions, and mongrel salukis.

She preserved her essences in a Russian doll, not canopic jars.

The park was filled with touch football and picnics.

A pigeon was remembering the tall cliffs of east Africa.

The mummy rook a soft left at the monument to the veterans of the Uncelebrated Wars.

At Jimmy's, she sat in the courtyard and sipped a glass of house red.

A couple asked her to take their picture.

Conjoined twins played Debussy.

When the waiter brought Ossobuco she didn't complain.

She didn't say a thing.

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Copyright © 2021 Peter Jay Shippy All rights reserved
from Kaputniks
Saturnalia Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission