That The Soul May Wax Plump

My dumpy little mother on the undertaker’s slab
had a mannequin’s grace.  From chin to foot
the sheet outlined her, thin and tall.  Her face
uptilted, bloodless, smooth, had a long smile.
Her head rested on a block under her nape,
her neck was long, her hair waved, upswept.  But later,
at “the viewing,” sunk in the casket in pink tulle,
an expensive present that might spoil, dressed
in Eden’s green apron, organdy bonnet on,
she shrank, grew short again, and yellow.  Who
put the gold-rimmed glasses on her shut face, who
laid her left hand with the wedding ring on
her stomach that really didn’t seem to be there
under the fake lace?

Mother’s work before she died was self-purification,
a regimen of near starvation, to be worthy to go
to Our Father, Whom she confused (or, more aptly, fused)
with our father, in Heaven long since.  She believed
in evacuation, an often and fierce purgation,
meant to teach the body to be hollow, that the soul
may wax plump.  At the moment of her death, the wind
rushed out from all her pipes at once.  Throat and rectum
sang together, a galvanic spasm, hiss of ecstasy.
Then, a flat collapse.  Legs and arms flung wide,
like that female Spanish saint slung by the ankles
to a cross, her mouth stayed open in a dark O.  So,
her vigourous soul whizzed free.  On the undertaker’s slab, she
lay youthful, cool, triumphant, with a long smile.

~May Swenson