11 February 2006 | Vol. 5, No. 4

Funeral Procession, Costa Rica

From the Pontiac wagon

mourners slide the casket,

shouldering it the final mile,

disciples again spiriting Christ

to the cave. The tombs from a distance

resemble a beekeeper's aviary,

decay's faintly audible buzz

in the air. Heat forces everything

nearer, a gloved hand squeezing.

On one shoulder the mourners

carry their dead; on the other,

the sky's vast latticework.

About the author:

Daniel Pinkerton is currently enrolled in the MFA program at Penn State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Terminus, Redivider, Indiana Review, and Minnesota Review, while reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Chattahoochee Review, and Pleiades. His fiction has appeared in Quarterly West. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize and an AWP Intro Journals award.

For further reading:

Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 5, No. 4, where "Funeral Procession, Costa Rica" ran on February 11, 2006. List other work with these same labels: poetry.

42opus is an online magazine of the literary arts.

copyright © 2001-2011
XHTML // CSS // 508