Photo by Andrew Coelho
March 15th, 2020 Poetry Challenge
Dear Ed Abbey’s Corpse
I never met you nor your animated self
nor known beery expeditions of legend
nor known the lusty, wordsmithed snares
that I imagine you set for barmaids
nor heard firsthand the glamorously anarchic rants
that provoked a generation,
but I read the Solitaire book
and even met a good German Shepherd named Abbey
whose upwardly mobile, educated, white liberal owners
loved you. You’d hate them, but Abbey licked rum ice cream from my hand
on a night filled with creosote and rain. You see,
Ed Abbey’s corpse, there’s a dance tonight
in this neighborhood far from the high desert’s cold,
and I’m walking with a fifty-something divorced señora
who sashays through the conga and piano and sax
which have spilled themselves velvet
from the open windows on Columbia Road.
Señora dances like there are hundreds
of Puerto Ricans in the street
ready to welcome us into this imperfect human song,
and who’ll arrive provocatively late to heaven’s door
where I imagine you’ve already shed the blue sleeping bag,
never telling where.
Photo by Christoph Schmid
Author's Commentary
About this poem:I wrote "Dear Ed Abbey’s Corpse" in response to a prompt, but it came out as an unlikely homage to anarchist writer Ed Abbey, whose famously discreet burial somewhere in the Arizona desert occurred in March 1989. I can't honestly say that I would have liked him (there's misogyny, for one thing), but I appreciate his intensely spirited writing. It took guts to die the way he did, to be buried the way he wanted. It took companions who also had guts. Guts and beer. I admire that. I hope my poem speaks a little to the passionate, if problematic, spirit we imperfect humans possess.
The Author
Kristina Hakanson is a graduate of Pacific University's MFA in Writing program where she served as senior poetry editor for Silk Road. Recent poems of hers have appeared in NonBinary Review, Broad Street, Canary, Cactus Heart, and Tinderbox. She lives in Arizona. www.logic0fwings.wordpress.com
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