Night Attendants
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You attend a death, the body shipping off,
the tongue so far in it cups the language below,
and the night black again, its water immaculate.
Impossible to imagine loneliness so much

like some parody of pure light, and the skin
consumed after the soapings and the spoonings, naked
in the off-color fantasy, the tones of sleep
and decay, when sleep sighs over the body. Imagine

how the prodding figures will come with requiems, sheets,
their muscular hands roiling each rib
like a curious package. They'll fall through spheres,
those night attendants, dressed

in fluorescent funk from the stars,
waiting while we shape our prayers, holed
in this lyrical self-love. You say
grief is a request for compensation.

This hand cups this breast at night
because it has no other place to go.