by Megan Hutchinson
A Golden Shovel after “A Meeting,” by Wendell Berry.
The first time I saw a dead person, I
was seven years old. She, our neighbor, had been sick with that gnawing disease that takes pleasure in blooming inside of a body, eating
mammary glands, liver, brain as though they were peaches– a whole bushel of them fresh off
the tree–and only ever leaving the pit, the gristled core. Some mourners blotted tissues under their eyes as an organ played, a mighty voice in the stifled chapel. Didn’t they know it was a fine evening outside, where other children were cupping lightning bugs and releasing them up to the trees?
Pegasus 