by Annie Przypyszny
about the woman who lives
in an open grave. She’s not
crazy. She’s versed
in Edith Wharton, Emily Post,
the final poems of Keats.
Her Anne Klein dress is only
slightly soiled, only a tad moth-
nibbled. The oak leaves
in her hair appear intentional.
She adorns her rich brown walls
with fine art: pages from trashed
copies of Victoria Magazine,
grubs inlaid like fat pearls,
a white-rose wreath she stole
from the headstone
of some mother’s child.
The gravedigger and hearse driver
find her quite lovely.
They keep offering her
the mausoleum, but she graciously
declines. How would she hear
the mourners through the marble?
How would she notate each sob
and moan on staff paper,
blessed with perfect pitch as she is?
She sings with a bone-chill
soprano, but she never howls
at the moon or associates
with ghosts. She doesn’t drink
blood from skulls. She’s very
pretty. Has the makings
of a catalog model, or a trophy wife.
But she likes her open grave, despite
mosquitoes, sun-scorch,
flooding. Townsfolk theorize
as to how this came about:
some say a golden-haired man,
a jilting. Others say she lost
a baby, that it slipped
out of her like a purple eel
and swam away. Maybe
she’s a mystic, praying
for the lightning-lunge
of some ancient God,
because what more
could a woman want? So inane,
all this speculation,
while the answer’s still alive,
albeit six-feet under.
Why does no one ask her
her story? She’s here,
she’s waiting, she’s dying
to tell it.
Annie Przypyszny is a poet from Washington, DC pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Maryland. She is an intern at the DC Writers Room and a reader for Bicoastal Review. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Bear Review, The Emerson Review, Grist, Sugar House Review, Tampa Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Shore Poetry, Soundings East, Poor Yorick, Hellbender Magazine, Midway Journal, and various other journals.