Corpse
from GHOSTWORDS
By Crisosto Apache
He stared at the body. — R. Akutagawa, 9. Cadaver
in my family, there has always been a taboo about handling
the dead
one autumn afternoon I walked down a dim slow hallway,
passing many locked doors, here was a hush to the intermittent
lights, telling secrets that lingered behind each door, autumn
waits outside the building, but leaves me with the lurid stench
of old plastic bags left out in the sun, too long
the room was downstairs, where she laid, tucked away in a grey
soundless room, she lays quieter than she was, a gaunt soundless
toe-tagged shell of a woman, nothing but a small aiming frame
in that room, she absorbs the cold table under a twinge light
dissolving the blue clotting cloth that covered her, the wedge
in her chest cavity whispers the surgical precision in passion
as I gazed at her suffocated finger tips and greyish bile color,
the unwillingness in her dermis somehow meant murder,
validated the availability of consenting cadavers
Originally published by the Loch Raven Review, Volume 14, No. 2, 2018
