The Dead Eat Everything

Playing Dead Means Different Things to Different People

39 P L a y i n g d e a d M e a n s d i F F e r e n t t h i n g s t o d i F F e r e n t P e o P L e The dead eat everything. rain, salted rain, honeyed photographs kept in closets. scientists have proven that the mouth is the last part of the body to die. in the ghetto, put your ear to the wettest door and listen. That’s the jaws dreaming of meat or metal: the pleasure principle. The sickle, after all, is an upper lip with ghost teeth: the black hood obscures the uvula. even the dead feel bad about eating veal— in the background of aM radio, you can hear them cursing themselves with whatever language they once swallowed like mother’s milk, grieving for youth. When i sleepwalk, i wake up in the kitchen, the one where my grandmother still rolls dice at night though we cannot see her. When i drink, i hide my face in the fridge. sitting at my father’s last bed, i licked every page of the Bible, and the priest stuffed bread into our mouths, and the chanting consumed the hospital air. driving home, i hit four fresh potholes, ridged like bite marks in the night. ...