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Rags and Bones
Sorting through his things like a rag-picker
or the rags and bones man who’d give you a goldfish
in a jam-jar for the stuff you brought him,
I came across a card in his collection of sayings
and aphorisms, “Follow Your Heart,” which
I thought ironic since he died of a heart attack
after a diet including cold beef fat spread on bread
like butter, which still makes me worry
since I had to clean the plate and eat any fat I
cut off, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”
He
never gave up trying to get the most
out of things, even on his death bed begging
the nurse for a hand job.
And as he lay with
light from stained glass falling over him
sailing through silky white billows as if
there was still something more, the coffin,
I thought, could just as well have been
a cradle. He’ll never die.
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Brian Swann’s most recent poetry collection is Imago (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023), and his most recent prose is Ya-honk! Goes the Wild Gander (Mad Hat Press, 2023).
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Irving Penn. Rag and Bone Man, London,1950. Platinum palladium print, printed 1967
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Author: Terence Winch
