A Stitched-Together Sestina by Connor L Simons

There is a term for post-mortem ashes: cremains. 

A portmanteau of bone, hair, skin, whatever fabric 

(a gown, sweats, a tattered t-shirt) draped the corpse 

when the attendant or nurse wheeling the gurney 

took it away. I’ve become obsessed with how brutal

the word is, how unflinching it is in imposing distance

that turns body into fire-ruined remains. Distance

is a thing we crave. Ashes demand refusal and cremains

does the work. When I say my mother’s name it seems brutal

to replace her with a clinical word. To make the fabric

of her life rigid, memory reflecting her weight on the gurney

as the mortician hauled her body (wait no, her corpse) 

into the fire. Though I never actually saw her corpse. 

I’m using all these poems to close the distance 

between me and her first moments on the gurney’s

padded cushion. Maybe the word cremains 

obsesses me because I never saw hers. Fabric’s

Latin-root is something skillfully made but I think I’m brutal 

in this making. I thought it would be brutal 

to stay and watch her linger, to wait for her corpse

to make its first appearance. She clung to the fabric 

of living, each inhalation increasing its distance

to the exhalation, the possibility of cremains 

pushing her to forestall the clank of the gurney’s 

wheel. I thought if I saw the steel-glint, the gurney’s

cold width, I’d crack. But here’s what’s brutal:

sitting here and lingering over the idea of cremains,

writing out images so I can say her corpse 

isn’t a body, letting words signify the distance. 

Something about the skill innate to fabric 

is starting to seem cruel. A word is fabric,

after all, parts stitched together. The gurney’s 

movement is unfeeling, just as the distance 

between cadaver and body is unfeeling. What’s brutal 

isn’t anything to do with blood stopping, the corpse’s

stillness, the way lips and finger and vein mix in cremains. 

It’s poems as fabric-making that’s brutal:

refusing to see her gurney-bound body as corpse,

when vitality spans the distance between body and cremains. 

Connor L Simons is a queer poet and translator based in the Twin Cities. They received their MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota, where they previously worked as Poetry Editor for the Great River Review. They were a recipient of the Daniel Pink poetry prize and were recently named a runner up for Breakwater Review’s Perseroff Prize. Their work has previously appeared in Poetry Northwest, Bookends Review, the Colorado Review, and is forthcoming in the Bennington Review and Brooklyn Review. 

22 November 2021