[Alex Pepple]

Online Vigil


Pallbearers clomp along the rain-washed street,
their boots like drums on cobblestone.
We’d set our maiden date where dead ones meet.

“Let’s bid adieu to Uncle Pete,”
she’d texted, emojied with bone.
Pallbearers trudge along the rain-washed street.

Her airbrushed eyes imaged conceit.
Her cane swipes flies; she heaves a groan.
I've been lured to a date where dead ones meet.

Her hand strokes, flesh I can’t delete;
no cheat code left to mute her moan.
Pallbearers shuffle down the rain-washed street.

“Are we Facebook-official, Sweet?”
she woos, her gap-tooth grin homegrown,
is revealed in the date where dead ones meet.

The coffin sinks in flowered sleet.
Chilled in the rain, I close my phone
where pallbearers paced down the rain-dark street,
in that encounter where the dead ones meet.

------------------------------------------------------


~~~Original version ~~~

Online


Pallbearers clomped on down the rainy street.
Our date had happened at the funeral home.
She’d typed in chain emails, “I’d love to meet

you there,” as my log-ins spiked when Uncle Pete,
loft-climbing, missed forever grabbing a tome.
Pallbearers bore on down the rainy street.

Her eyes betrayed airbrushing skill. She beat
flies with her church cane, wheezing, “Mud and loam
everywhere!” through the funeral home. Crow’s feet

traced her face when she moaned, “I’d love a treat.”
The chat fizzled; I meant to say a gnome
but thought, “Online, here’s where I’d hit Delete.”

Forecasters missed this storm that sapped blood heat,
bedraggled boots—heavens a waterbomb.
Pallbearers clomped on down the rainy street.

Offline it was, yet still, I prayed for cheat
codes per her online games. Then the mouth of a tomb.
Pallbearers eased their load on flowered sleet.
She rasped, “Make this Facebook-official—tweet!”