Disinterment.
Even a final resting place becomes an unmade bed
when a modern highway is planned.
Old bones must yield to fast lanes.
The newspapers reported in so many words,
that his now decayed butt once mooned heaven,
for he was interred head first.
A pocket watch worth a nineteenth century workman’s yearly wage
was helter-skelter amid his yellow skeleton.
Research was done, mouldy obituaries read,
and it was reported,
that this rear end up burial was his arrogant wish,
for on judgement day the world would turn upside down
and he’d ascend directly, with no chance of getting lost.
And so this man of affairs would firmly shake hands man-to-man
with the supreme creator of all affairs.
A year later the now defunct Brooklyn Eagle reported
that a warehouse misplaced his sorry bones.
Richard Fein has been published in numerous print and web journals including Southern Humanities Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Mississippi Review, Kansas Quarterly, Oyez, Parnassus Literary, Touchstone, Morpo, Snakeskin, PIF, Afternoon, Small Pond, Blue Unicorn, Soundings East, Sunstone, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum, and Oregon East.