Vistas & Byways Fall 2015

  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE
  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE

A Dead Husband
by Margaret Liddell


No matter how many people surround your bed
No matter who holds your hand
You die alone
She falls on your dead body as soon as you exhale for the last time
Is it because you didn’t let her touch you while you were alive?
She stands over your stillness in the casket, pats your shoulder, rubs your head
Are you angry?

She clutters your grave with military flags, white angels with folded hands, plastic flowers,
poems engraved on granite

Does this chaos disturb you?
She plants eerie nightlights around your resting place
Are you afraid of the dark?
She lies on your grave
Fingernails filled with cemetery dirt
Red eyes sobbing
Does this annoy you?
Summer arrives and no one has tended your grave
The disarray that covers you creeps closer to your headstone
Will you ever rest in peace?

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