THE DEAD MAKE LIGHT

I have seen this graveyard from the highway
on a hundred family trips to the city. Grey legions of marble flashing by
in sunlight, and always impossibly seated at their center, the massive black squalid factory
spuming smoke.

From our station wagon's back seat, my brother whispered to me, "Of course, stupid-- Where do you think we get electricity from?
They burn the dead to make light."

And another time,
"That's where you lived before you were born."

I saw myself sleeping small beneath the cool green shade, hands folded,
my face blank white marble.
Until somehow from a bedroom in Long Island
mom and dad together crackled the current
that set me breathing.