Poem of the Week, Funeral Arrangements, Gabrielle DeMarre, and IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

This is again an oddly depressing poem, especially given some of the subject matter we have to impart before we get to our weekly fill of verse. The editrices here are about to arrange our own metaphorical funerals, but before you start ordering the flowers, as TEMPORARY measures, we have decided to do the following.

1. Submissions are closed until further notice.  Again, hopefully this is temporary. We have a lot of work to respond to and no time to respond to it.

2. As such, work that is currently submitted will have a longer than average response time. If you have not heard from us by the end of August, please inquire.

3. Contributor copies of Issue 12 have not been sent out. They will be sent out by the beginning of August, and hopefully arrive soon after.

4. Copies of Issue 12 are not yet in stores. You can still order them from our Paypal, and those will be sent out with our contributor copies. We are hoping to get them in stores BEFORE THE END OF JULY, and we will post when this occurs.

5. For some reason we feel like the Politburo of Soviet Russia.

6. And now for the poem, from a great once and future contributor, Gabby De Marre. May we stave off our untimely deaths with these TEMPORARY strictures, and again, thank you for your patience. We promise to write you nice eulogies, and that we will get back to you before you die anyway.

Funeral Arrangements

by Gabrielle DeMarre

Since I am quite sure you are going to die an untimely death, sometimes I imagine your funeral. I will show up alone in all black, exactly on time, since I assume “fashionably late” does not apply to funerals. I’ll want to introduce myself to your grieving mother as someone who loved her son very much, but I won’t because of that obligatory lie that cannot be avoided. Honestly, who do I think I am, and do I really belong at this funeral? Unsure, I’ll sit in the back of the church, I won’t say a word, and I probably won’t cry either. Since it will certainly be a violent death, there will be no viewing, which will eliminate the debate I always have with myself at open-casket funerals--which will be the most upsetting: seeing the body, or not. When it is over, I will slip away, hopefully unnoticed. As I pull my car out of the lot, I will wish that I had spoken to your mother--for that camaraderie of common grief.