MELISSA KOOSMANN

What the Dead Deserved

Death is wrong.
—said at a peace rally

We began to hunt the reeking corpses down,
because they smelled bad,
because they’d pissed
and shit themselves when they died,
because it wasn’t fair to the living.
Our attack was small-scale at first,
a little gentle ribbing
aimed at undertakers, some rocks
thrown at hearses, a bomb
in a backwoods cemetery
and another explosion in the Parisian catacombs,
that sort of thing. Soon, OK,
it got out of hand.
But it was mostly reasonable.
We’re reasonable people. We are.