Elliott M. Freeman
Jean Grey, Everdying, Expresses Frustration at the Cyclical Bullshit
I am making a mockery of death
with this revolving door, every wake
more hollow; Scott pantomimes the words:
Here lies the late, may she forever rest.
I don't blame him, the way he looks at my corpse
like I'm a child who thinks closed eyes
mean invisibility. There are only so many resurrections
before a miracle becomes inevitable,
before eulogies are less like confessions
and more like Post-It notes. Death, for me,
is a very long airport corridor.
I deserve to live. I am life. I burn with it,
each cell aflame with cancerous, tambourine vitality.
I can reorder stars, fold a constellation
under my wing, consume a red dwarf
and its bright blue planets. This thing inside me
that is also me has been dead for so long
that it becomes a foreigner to feeling,
wringing novas like grapefruits.
Don't look at me like that, like I'd be a burning slaughter,
don’t claim I am too much woman to fix at pen-point.
Don't tell me that strength is the end of drama
when the Silver Fucking Surfer is still printing
pages--poetic, tragic, Power Cosmic--
the soap opera of the strong.
Why can't I come back to life
without the promise of death?
Every girl named Jean Grey
is here with me, eventually.
Every goddess dies
for the convenience of her story.
I am making a mockery of death
with this revolving door, every wake
more hollow; Scott pantomimes the words:
Here lies the late, may she forever rest.
I don't blame him, the way he looks at my corpse
like I'm a child who thinks closed eyes
mean invisibility. There are only so many resurrections
before a miracle becomes inevitable,
before eulogies are less like confessions
and more like Post-It notes. Death, for me,
is a very long airport corridor.
I deserve to live. I am life. I burn with it,
each cell aflame with cancerous, tambourine vitality.
I can reorder stars, fold a constellation
under my wing, consume a red dwarf
and its bright blue planets. This thing inside me
that is also me has been dead for so long
that it becomes a foreigner to feeling,
wringing novas like grapefruits.
Don't look at me like that, like I'd be a burning slaughter,
don’t claim I am too much woman to fix at pen-point.
Don't tell me that strength is the end of drama
when the Silver Fucking Surfer is still printing
pages--poetic, tragic, Power Cosmic--
the soap opera of the strong.
Why can't I come back to life
without the promise of death?
Every girl named Jean Grey
is here with me, eventually.
Every goddess dies
for the convenience of her story.
Elliott M. Freeman is the descendant of pirates and layabouts; his writing career peaked at 19 when he wrote a scene about naked people on a pond of mercury. He lives in the hinterlands of Virginia where he writes and teaches, making the world safer one semicolon at a time.