Abney Park Cemetery
Mrs Collier grins, eyes rolled far back into her head,
stinging nettles exploding from the bramble patch between
her legs, when two gay boys finally collapse on her tombstone.
She’s pleased for them, remembering how prudish she had been;
The ankle-length bloomers she had bought one winter, the table legs
sheathed for fear of swooning. In death, she thrives and wriggles
like a babe. Tree roots creep up Reverend Smith’s long johns &
his long-dead lungs heave a sigh. Even the granite angels look sated,
he thinks, left serene and topsy-turvy by the orgiastic greenery.
The council left the cemetery to the lushness of nature, & nature
lustily, joyfully, has taken it back. A La Sainte Union girl flings away
her virginity in the name of thirty-one years of happy corpses.
Condoms on the graves, spilling sperm on to the soil. Lady Abney
loves it. Out of earth we were formed, intones the Reverend silently,
& Unto earth we must return.
