Among the Dead

American Poetry Review, The, Jul/Aug 2005 by Rosenberg, Liz

They are swelling

by leaps and bounds, the ranks of the dead

Peter the tailor, and Mr. Papastrat our kindly landlord

who grew a garden of Eden from an old coffee tin,

and one fierce ghost clamping a pipe in his teeth

still spreads soot over the face of the earth.

While last night in my dream, you lay

among the dead, guarded by a colleague

who looks like a gargoyle-perfecting

her stoniness many long years

and I could not get past her,

had not the heart to get past her

even to reach you, beloved first friend of adulthood,

with your Peter Pan collars and ageless sweetness.

We have not been close in years

and when I woke and phoned you,

this startled you, as a bird is startled by a strange, rusty machine

and that was another death.

Nowhere among the living could I find words to express my love.

LIZ ROSENBERG'S newest book is I Just Hope It's Lethal, Poems of Sadness, Madness and Joy, due out from Houghton Mifflin in 2005. She teaches at SUNY Binghamton, and writes a monthly book review column for the Boston Globe. She has poems forthcoming in the Alaska Quarterly Review and the Kenyon Review.