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Custom Coffin

If I die by bullet, I want
my casket to be shaped
like a gun.

If by heart attack,
place my ashes in an urn
that pounds like a beaten drum.

And if I drown,
let the light of my body
wash over the funereal crowd.

But please,
oh please, oh please
if, before my time,

my child’s child would be
shot and died, don’t
decorate his casket

with lego-bricks
and decals of toy trucks.
Wrap him in a shroud

made of the dust
of my crumbled bones.
Bury him in a hole

dug in what was once me,
a pit so deep and wide
that the whole

of what was previously
good in the world
would fall into it.

Dick Westheimer has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years. His most recent poems have appeared or are upcoming in Rattle, Paterson Review, Chautauqua Review, RiseUp Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, and Cutthroat

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