The Man with the Corpse on His Shoulders

I know a man who carries a corpse on his shoulders.

Yesterday, at sunset, I thought I saw

a lump of what had been a foot, or a smear of what

maybe was a face, just to the side of my friend’s pant leg

down by the unshined toes of his brown saddle shoes.

It was the dead, gray, mortal thing, beautiful and real

in some way no one can explain—the corpse he carries

and the way he carries it—so much so that

when I hear a bossa nova, I think of him, and when

I try to write a poem, sure and frank and flashing

with sex and wisdom and all the things I want to include,

like my friend and the corpse he carries, I think of him again.

Today he told me “Stay away from me, I’m sick.”

I told him his shoes were in a poem I was writing,

but that’s not true: the shoes escaped me

while he hoisted his corpse. Back home,

he props it in its chair for the night, so it may watch

him dreaming.

Here it is, in my black-and-tan book bag, next to my green

Plato. Look at it. His face, uncorrupted, has lost what rage

it ever had. His white hair, grown past his shoulders,

feels so delicate; strands show up on tabletops, sweaters,

bowls of soup. His veiny hands, covered in loose,

translucent skin, clasp one another as though he were

meeting himself and felt on fire with the need

to touch. Some trouble with his belt: it keeps unbuckling,

catching my book bag, scraping my right ear

as I force his body into it. The bag-weight hurts my shoulder,

pulls me to the right as I try walking a straight line.

I love the work I make when carrying him, love

the hurt of his buckle on my ear, the chafing of my

shoulder, the ache in my arm, my full bladder, sleep-amoebas

swimming in front of all I see.

shapeless things, I see my friend walking to his car, stopping

to adjust the corpse’s feet so they don’t kick him every step.

I see him the way I sometimes see haloes a few inches above

the heads of strangers, or statues making tiny movements

with their eyes. I think I’ll ask him if I may sleep tonight

in his back yard. The radio predicted comets, shooting stars,

and it’s dark enough out there for them to seem real.