Last Supper, The

Hudson Review, The, Winter 2003 by Bedell, Jack B

Because my wife's the kind of woman

who'd rather see a prison museum

than tour the oldest home in Huntsville,

I find myself in rows of homemade pistols

forged from pipe, shieves filed down from spoons,

and knives made from angle-iron

splayed like Christmas trees to go in easy,

come out like a world of hurt.

The walls around are plastered with oddments:

rodeo flyers, a letter from Clyde Barker

to Henry Ford praising his V-8,

a century of news clippings announcing riots,

executions, politicians' visits,

craft shows, and new construction--

simple enough for the prison's resume.

A life-sized cell and Old Sparky

frame the whole experience.

The distance between the two could never be enough

for a man who knows the day he's going to die.

I can't wrap my mind around the deliberation

it would take to button my shirt for the last time

or to order my last meal prepared fire hot

and in enough bowls so none of it would touch.

The weight of a man's choices bears down on me

in the menu cards taped to the glass,

and nothing I could choose would lend faith

or direction enough to make Death close up shop

and shuffle back down the hall.

My wife slips in behind me to study the scene

as quiet as a warden in the witness box.

"Soft-shelled crabs," she says into my ear.

"I wouldn't even have to think about it."

JACK B. BEDELL* is Assistant Dean of Arts & Sciences at Southeastern Indiana University. His first collection, At the Bonehouse, won the Breakthrough Award for Southern and Southwestern Poets (Texas

Review Press, 1999).

*Asterisk indicates a new contributor.