Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

R. A. Villanueva
Mine will be a beautiful service
1.
When you bury me, fold
my arms, neat
over the plateau
of a double-breasted suit,
the angle of the lapel
matching my now
permanent expression.
Pressed, chemical,
I will look content,
but confused
as when you watched me turn
in my sleep, dreaming:
of a Golgotha
in beeswax, a coffin
for swallows, a toothless augur
reading the flights and cries
of owls. You
will hear the cadence
of my voice, the snapping
oblique of my laugh. Among the votives
194 ◆ Crab Orchard Review