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ten funeral fragments

BY SAM SAX 
         —for my grandfather Maxwell
one.


two.






three. 











four. 




five.





















six.



seven.














eight. 


nine.









x. 





they buried my grandfather alive with his entire library.


the last time harry houdini walked beneath stage lights
he knew he was going to die.

the doctors warned him in plain english
another blow to the chest you'll be finished, kid.


maxwell had a smoker's heart the size of an abandoned sky
scraper.  massive.   empty.    only good for casting shadows
beating proud and cold against that crooked cityscape.

the doctors warned him
in plain english.

when they found him in a pool of himself
beneath that queens streetlight his face held surprise
how a child's hand holds illusion.


the first time houdini escaped from his casket 
he's quoted as having said,
    the weight of earth is killing.


they buried him alive with no photographs of his family

beneath that hillside
                           overlooking the city of his birth
                           he can almost taste his childhood
in the dark
                     stale air he's learned to treat like a woman

from within his office of coffin and paper 
there is no skylight cutting knives through the darkness 
no light to read by and besides the suffocation
     this is the hardest to breathe

how oxygen must taste from a gas chamber's belly
a family's forgotten tongue
a phantom limb twitching with a dance still in the blood 

instead he studies his memories
fingers the damp pages
careful catalogues, the cartography of his family


the magician performed his own burial
three times.                  always barely surviving.


he remembers the girlchild conceived on a bed of rye whiskey
the wife with shotguns for eyes that only bloomed
when he'd make himself caress her triggers
the three sons he treated as a dictionary

he remembers them now
as a pasture of forgotten sunflowers
faces bent in mourning to the ground 
a field of forgotten immigrants detained
by chain links in the armory of his house.

pulling dead rabbits out the empty
to feed his children.


the weight of earth is killing.


each time my mother pulled her father from the drunk
    of his car where he had been living dead for years

stale cigarettes floating in an ocean of mistakes
a bottle of gin in the shape of a woman
a shredded manuscript stained as his teeth 

he felt this weight.


as far as i know i have never died
but have often been mistaken for dead 
and often been buried alive
embalmed in a bottle of bottom shelf whatever 

i am this constant walking apology
this hijack of grandpa's hijinks and stage tricks
this pigeon pull from mouth and naming poems
this sawing in half with a microphone
to show his drunk ghost still intact

i know what it feels like to be drowning in earth
clawing my way through dirt toward surface

always barely surviving


call this.    magic.

sam sax is a bay area based writer, educator, and performer. he’s oakland’s first two-time queer grand slam champion. sam curates the new shit show, a reading series in san francisco aimed at producing new poetry. he has toured internationally, performing at universities, slams, basements, alleyways, and amphitheaters. sam is currently leading writing and literacy workshops for queer at risk youth.
ISSN 2157-8079
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