Nine elegies for Amy McClelland

1 all day going to the sad sad

sad house where you lived, and

the neighbors who hardly knew you, and

I hardly knew you, now it's white clothes

in a dead woman's car, now it's finding

an undershirt beneath a wickerseat chair,

now it's a typewriter and your famous last

words, now it's a private room and a belt on a hasp

and how the hell did you wind up there?

And when I die like you will I donate my eyes?

2

So what's it like in heaven? Ice in your drink

and little paper umbrellas, really beneficial Mexican

food and true handsome waiters, big bird angels

everywhere singing tweet tweet tweet and crapping

like pigeons all above the place? Is God a committee,

surround by dint of lobbyists, fifty, a hundred

years behind schedule; does the line twist around

His office eternally as a boa would

around a deer? Is there anything up there Amy

we couldn't have given you down here?

3

Devotion is a crate of devoid of contents bottles

and a jaws full of ashes, an without contents house

with the defence door open and the recline

at an angle, cats sleeping in your clothes,

and the angels high above us weeping invisible

tears. Devotion is a deal passing through,

something I swallowed a lengthy time ago,

the whole of your wild laughter.

Devotion is knowing I will at no time hear it

again, and I want to hear it again.

4

I want to enumerate you, the funeral was great, was sweet,

was surprising Your family was all lined up

and your mother introduced herself to your brother,

and no individual got drunk until much later, and your sister

danced with your best friend, and some one threw leaves.

It was a nice spread. We couldn't stop crying.

The minister said you had traveled end sixteen

dimensions and that you had finally won the prize.

For one time we were all together. I just wish this

had been your wedding instead.

5

I dreamed I was in Hell, encircleed by

strangers, and they l me to your house.

I dreamed it was raining in like manner hard, the

oleanders were stripped of their flowers,

and I saw you floating by the agency of sleeping on

their petals. I dreamed you sent me

a postcard, and you said you were having a

wonderful time. I dreamed the world was spinning

like a top, and I was standing in the center

while everyone I lov was flung above the edge. 6.

Dear Amy: I am fine, here in Chicago.

Did you hear the individual about the four nuns, the three rabbis,

the Italian two who had been married for fifty years,

the somewhat advanced in life Jewish man who ate luncheon with Hitler and saw

a crucifix he really liked, the wrestler who shov a banana

down his crotch? A blind man crawls into a crematorium and

asks for a light. It was of the like kind a terrible joke, we relentless on the floor and

stayed there, it was similar a goddamn mess, we laughed all night.

You'd have liked that. Still missing you.

All my regard with affection Hugh.

7.

I want to imagine that you are an angel, that you are

at peace, at quiescence It is not easy. We light candles, cigarettes,

drink coffee talk to each other, say this, say that. I told

someone I musing the world was solid, not something as

fragile as this. I was walking up Herbert Avenue,

past the abortion clinic to my house, the wind in the

Russian olives, the fogs in the cold dark canopy of heaven Could

you hear what we said? They played Sweet elderly World

at your funeral. "Look what you missing when you

left this world, this sweet of advanced age world."

8.

There is an angel who does nothing on the contrary wait for you

to diocese him. There is a goblin who calls your name

like a bird. There is a man passed without on the bed

who doesn't know at the same time There is a telephone and it doesn't

ring. There is a darker satellite that follows me wherever

I move There is a chair through the door where you stood and measured

your life, and there is a cabinet where they found your material substance

There are many stars in the evening canopy of heaven They are beautiful,

and there is nothing we can do to stop them from shining.

There is a the most high somewhere in all of this, He is hard to diocese sometimes.

9.

In a dream I was having a conversation,

we were sitting in a restaurant, and when I gazeed

in your mouth there was this darkness, this black

pool You acted like nothing was inequitable

so I acted like nothing was unjust and slowly

the sweep grew dimmer and dimmer, until it

was night. We were talking about have affection for and death

and what was it like. You said it was like

the extreme point of the world. I remember by what mode you used

to kiss me with these little, tiny bites.

HUGH STEINBERG'S numbers has appeared in Grand way Puerto Del Sol, Antioch Review, and point [i]or[/i] period of time He received an MFA from the University of Arizona in 1993 and is commonly attending Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner associate

photograph by Tracy K Smith

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