MATTEO MESSINA DENARO’S GIORGIO ARMANI SUIT HOLDS A PRESS CONFERENCE

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma

Giuseppe di Matteo was kidnapped in 1993 in an attempt to blackmail his father into not giving evidence against the Mafia, Italian prosecutors said. The 12-year-old boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and dissolved in acid. Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the mobsters who ordered little Giuseppe's kidnapping and murder, was finally caught yesterday in Palermo while he visited a private clinic for cancer treatment. —Mirror (UK), January 17, 2023

For Giuseppe di Matteo, who loved animals.

I stand before you today

single-breasted and slim cut

of jacquard silk-wool blend

with breast pocket for a pocket square

made with Italian love.

Gentle fingers

stitched together all the precision-cut

pieces of me into the kind of shape

that dreams someday it will grace

a UEFA champion at a red-carpet gala

or the jaunty gait of a screen star

collecting a prize.

 

Now imagine

our fate in the closet of U Siccu—Diabolik

—hoarder of Raybans and Rolexes,

my Armani brothers, my Versace cousins,

in bunkers during 30 years on the lam.

 

Scars are etched in every single place

he sweats acid of the same grade

used to melt bodies after torture

and strangulation. That is to say

those not simply blasted away.

 

Here on the threshold of his demise

I announce today my candidacy

to serve as outfit for the cremation.

 

After all, nobody wants to don me,

and I, uncomfortable now on any skin,

no longer abide the humiliation of covering up

a criminal body. The way he felt my buttons,

caressed my smooth weave, precludes

all pretense to future dignity.

 

But the worst was how he adjusted each sleeve,

likely how he strangled that pregnant woman,

 

with  just  one  tug. 

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in OffCourse, Plants & Poetry, Parentheses, Tuck Magazine, and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

WHAT TO DO WITH MY DEAD BODY

by Lois Wickstrom

At his funeral, CJ looked as if he would sit up and laugh when he thought we had grieved enough. He wore his best suit and his best grin. But he never ate a bite of the food we brought. Nobody alive could have resisted that long. Nobody is that good at playing dead.

The casket, the rented hall. It’s all theater. Being dead doesn’t require props or an audience. When I’m dead I don’t want anybody to doubt it.

My mother was cremated, at the lowest priced place she could find in the yellow pages. My brother sprinkled her ashes beside one of her favorite mountain streams.

The smoke from cooking her dead body turned the air gray. I do not want my last act to be pollution.

At the green burial grounds, each corpse is wrapped in a shroud of cotton, and buried six feet under.

I like the idea of being eaten by worms. My corpse does not need a room of its own.

During the yellow fever, more than 10,000 bodies were piled up and buried together in what is now the parking lot where I worship. Being dead has not changed. Being buried means the same.

After embalming wears off, caskets corrode, and worms eat us, we will all become fertilizer.

Why wait?

As soon as I’m dead, throw my remains in the composter. Twirl the knob and spread my loam in the nearby woods. When all my organic parts have been consumed by new growth, layer new dead above me. And let them rot.

Lois is a former science teacher. She has written a series of science-based folktales, and turned some of them into plays. In each modernized tale, the protagonist achieves a better ending because of learning scientific principles. Lois likes to garden, ride her bike with her husband, cook, and she votes in every election.

THE CREMATION CRISIS

by Betsy Mars

A flyer for a campaign to dissuade Jews from cremation. Courtesy of Rabbi Elchonon Zohn accompanying “More and more Jews are choosing cremation. These rabbis aren’t happy about it,” Forward, January 5, 2023

An ash is an ash of course, of course,

unless it's derived from a Jewish corpse.

Then under law and tradition (Tradition!)

said corpse must be interred, of course.

 

We don't want to reminisce about history 

when we're enmeshed in a different kind 

of misery, and the associations 

with Nazi Germany might lead to regret 

and painful discourse. 

 

But in the end the worms have their way 

(first course) no matter our religion, 

and ashes to ashes, dust to dust, 

so why not hasten the process 

rather than wasting space for bones and stones 

(though most rabbis and scholars do 

not endorse this course, of course)?

 

The Bible does not tell us so, of a prohibition, 

so off we go, and we're all letting go 

of our divisions— or

at least the pundits tell us so—

and at least in this final decision, keeping up 

with the goyim, assimilation above 

the ground, not under ground, a shanda.

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, publisher, and an editor at Gyroscope Review. Her writing has appeared widely online and in numerous print anthologies. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee.  Her photos have been published in Rattle (as the Ekphrastic Challenge prompt), Redheaded Stepchild, and as a cover image for Spank the Carp. She works as a substitute teacher, and as a cat wrangler in her spare time. Her chapbooks and small press publications (Kingly Street Press) are available on Amazon. In addition to her chapbook collaboration with Alan Walowitz, she recently worked with artist Judith Christensen on an installation in San Diego which is part of an ongoing exploration of memory, identity, home, and family. 

PREAMBLE TO DEATH

by Monica Korde

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, ARE DYING.

Here with only hours to spare, air 

leaving the lungs, families rush 

from hospital to hospital 

begging for a breath, for a bed 

while opulent hotel rooms 

offer a hundred covid beds 

for members of justice.

Here votes matter, deaths don’t. 

Politicians ride chariots, strut 

through reckless rallies and 

use words liberally:

“Nothing to panic. It’s all imaginary.”

“No need for masks, why worry?”

“After all, everyone has to die eventually”.

Here the gravedigger works 24-hour shifts, 

his gloves left behind to 

avoid the spade from slipping. 

It is Ramzan but he must have water before 

he goes on- turning the earth, getting the body

removing it from the makeshift ambulance 

burying it faster than he can count. 

The priest works equally—

he prays for a hundred pyres, stokes the fires, and 

this pandemic pandit of sorts walks round-the-clock 

through this burning mess

roll calling names as the flames get warm enough. 

Here the departed lie outside 

community-built crematoriums. 

No marigold, no silk, no sandalwood 

to adorn the tired bodies. 

Carefully wrapped in outrage, in anguish

they find kinship and unity

these souls on stand-by

waiting for an undignified exit. 

 

ENDLESSLY EMERGING IN BODY BAGS ON GURNEYS—ONE, TWO, THREE DEATHS PER MINUTE, OVER FOUR THOUSAND IN 24 HOURS—ON THIS DAY OF MAY 2021, WE MOURN IN THE MAKING OF THIS REPUBLIC AND QUESTION HEREBY HOW TO ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION. 

Monica Korde, is a poet from India, currently living in Belmont, California. Along with writing poems, she reads at several virtual poetry readings hosted in the Bay area and regularly co-hosts an online poetry open mic. Her poetry has appeared online on the website of San Francisco Public Library, on YouTube published by local poetry open mics, and in anthologies. 

 

THE VATICAN'S NEW DECREE ON CREMATION

a sonnet
by Richard Hacken 

The Bios Urn is a fully biodegradable urn designed to convert you into a tree after life. But is it okay with Pope Frances?

New guidelines came out this past Tuesday from Vatican City
Regarding burnt human remains, whether powdery or gritty:

Set them neatly in places that are sacred and Catholic-approved;
They should never be scattered or otherwise randomly moved.
They should not be compressed into dice or shot deep into space:
They were once a live human, so show them the requisite grace.

Don't partition your loved ones (who've suddenly gone caput)
Between Mantua, Aspen and waters just off of Beirut:
Resurrection makes difficult repatriation of soot.

It's more pious to plunk our deceased into boxes beneath
The terrain and to add a memorial ribbon or wreath!

So rather than storing your mom in a crate on the shelf,
Understand the subtext into which such theologies delve:
"If you claim to be faithful, then don't make an ash of yourself."


Richard Hacken has published in TheNewVerse.News a few times. He has also translated into English seven poetry collections of Galsan Tschinag, a Tuvan shaman from Mongolia who writes in German.