Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Last Rites at the Garden Depot” by Elena Senechal-Becker.

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Last Rites at the Garden Depot

By Elena Senechal-Becker

There’s a hole in the sidewalk next to where

your brother’s ashes are buried. Right, I say,

someone was digging there. It’s not unthinkable,

you think. There is something to get at. Something

to be got down there. Breathless from too nosy,

want what they’ve got. I rearrange my teeth

with my tongue. Holes don’t gape the way

they used to anymore. It’s a sin. I take

the stalk, hand me the trowel. Lee Valley ass.

The Jekyll Weeder. Call it good boy so it doesn’t

move. Three-pronged dive into the dirt now.

Rough it out of the way. Gravel in your facemeat.

Sorry, I say, didn’t mean to. You always mean

the things you do. Yeah, you’re like that.

Burrowing now, my hand mole-rat quick

and naked too, searching landforms

for your ache. Boom, there it is. I found

something, a long seed. Molded to the

earth like a popping vein. High blood pressure

for my girl The Giving Ground. Preeclampsia,

she’s about to yield for sure. Given the death

rate, we have shit to do. I palpate the seed

like mad, like palming a tree. Knot press —

I’m a masseuse, apparently. Pop goes

the weasel and suddenly the seed is out

of its sheath like a grapefruit vesicle.

It blinks once, slow as milk teeth,

then opens its mouth to cry.

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Copyright © Elena Senechal-Becker

Elena Sénéchal-Becker is a writer living in Montreal. Her work has appeared in CrabFat, Arc Poetry, BrokenPencil and others.

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