Mary Donnelly

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Disturbance in the Universe

It is the smugness of the dead
that makes them so complacent,
so malleable. Apathy has set them
free. We can no longer hurt them.
Not with our curses, our tears,
our stories they cannot defend.
We dress them up or down and,
even if standing there listening,
a nosey sheet of vapor
against the wall,
they exhale their anger
faster than a teapot on a stove.
For why should they be mad?
The dead—they pity us. They have it
all—retirement and sleeping in,
minimal expenses. They walk
painlessly through mud and snow,
over the glass we broke in the
kitchen. They do not bend down.
They do not pick it up.

Mary Donnelly is a Brooklyn-based writer, educator, and video producer whose work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Hanging Loose, Hunger Mountain, The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, The Literary Review, and The Yale Review, and in the chapbook Mad World Colored Oil (Dancing Girl Press). I teach through Gotham Writers Workshop and am a senior editor for DMQ Review.