Eating with the dead
by Sue Proffitt
We set places for them at the table—
white bowls, wicker mats , wine glasses
alternate living dead living dead—
take our seats without speaking,
serve them first: consider their photographs
(next to their plates) in silence
as we break bread, drink red wine,
candlelight tracing their faces,
invited out of no-time
to return to the en-fleshed.
They say the dead are starving
for the slick of our tongues,
the sweet-salt aroma
of our mouths
masticating desires, regrets.
Did they feast on us
as we remembered,
as we listened to that low hum
like a wire in wind
thrumming just above our heads?
—
In South America, Mexico especially, the custom of families eating a meal in the company of their dead relatives in a graveyard is still practised on “the day of the dead,” Día de Muertos.
Sue Proffitt lives by the coast in South Devon, on the edge of a cliff in a coastguard cottage. She has an MA in Creative Writing, is a Hawthornden Fellow, and has been published in a number of magazines, anthologies, and competitions. Apart from writing poetry, swimming in the sea and walking the coast path are her two great loves. She has two poetry collections published: Open After Dark (Oversteps, 2017) and The Lock-Picker (Palewell Press, 2021). She is looking for a home for her third collection.
