Uses for Ashes
Jane Rosenberg LaForge
For cinderblock, for soap, for the
resurrection of my mother in
buildings and cleaning products,
her two chief concerns. Do pearls
burn, I wondered, as she was inserted
into the oven. Everything thinks of
Nazis when I ask this, but she was
merely old and infirm, and not set
fire wearing her pearls. It is only
the principle of the thing, pearls
being her only decoration. My mother
pondered a conventional immortality,
in the bricks and architecture of
everyday buildings; you could drive
by on the street, she said, and always
see your achievements. So unlike
her rapacious children. If pearls
melted, would they coagulate as
if a body of liquid, a lambent stock
of bone? Or would they be like tears
excruciating to let go off, too jagged
to hold onto. Or like ash through the
gardening gloves. Impossible to count
and vigilantly awaiting the catalyst,
glinting until the next implosion.
Jane Rosenberg LaForge
For cinderblock, for soap, for the
resurrection of my mother in
buildings and cleaning products,
her two chief concerns. Do pearls
burn, I wondered, as she was inserted
into the oven. Everything thinks of
Nazis when I ask this, but she was
merely old and infirm, and not set
fire wearing her pearls. It is only
the principle of the thing, pearls
being her only decoration. My mother
pondered a conventional immortality,
in the bricks and architecture of
everyday buildings; you could drive
by on the street, she said, and always
see your achievements. So unlike
her rapacious children. If pearls
melted, would they coagulate as
if a body of liquid, a lambent stock
of bone? Or would they be like tears
excruciating to let go off, too jagged
to hold onto. Or like ash through the
gardening gloves. Impossible to count
and vigilantly awaiting the catalyst,
glinting until the next implosion.