Death Benefits by Robin Morgan Read Free Book Online Page A

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    Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.

DEATH BENEFITS
    What might I do to get beyond
    living all these lives of quiet
    courage too close for comfort
    to endurance or mere suffering
    or graceless martyrdom—all of which
    equal cowardice: the unsaid, undone, unheard,
    unthought of, and undreamt undoing of what
    I’ve undeniably understood
    this undertaking would unfold
    or even (unconventionally) unify?
    â€œLeave your loved ones
    fixed for life,” the saying goes—and stays.
    Life insurance and death benefits
    are what a sensible person hopes for.
    Meanwhile, Denial
    leaks from our containment vessels
    and passes through the doors and walls
    of houses, flats, lungs, conversations,
    an odorless, tasteless, non-discriminating
    equal opportunity destroyer,
    the blinded head proud in its even,
    ceaseless, swivel.
    Is it Denial then I follow in a burst
    of irritation with my own obsessive focus
    on one subject: this man, this woman, their
    tiresome and pretentiously embattled love?
    Others are aging and dying, sharing a crisis
    of energy, sickening, telling kind lies,
    outgrowing commitments, not getting involved.
    Others, long starved into hatred, are killing
    still others with the death benefit that reassures
    them they are not merely part of a tactical phase.
    Others glide through back alleys, blunted
    triangles of shadow, movable famines, bolts
    of coarse cloth whispering How disrespectful
    to god it would be to appear
    out in public not wearing scar tissue.
    Besides, it’s protective, they add, turning
    away. Why is that swivel familiar?
    How can Denial deny coexisting
    with the fiddlehead fern even as it exudes
    its own Bach Air for cello too loud
    for our ears? Or, wordless, deny
    how a cat celebrates its own tongue
    with each sauve coral yawn? Still,
    before Affirmation becomes a denial
    remember that this time cat, frond, and
    melody too will be forced
    to share benefits deadly as our own
    denial of what they have never protested to be
    their own innocence—too pure for that.
    Which is not a disclaimer. I too have had policies,
    kept up my payments, gone veiled,