Donald Illich

Open Tomb Day

Today is open tomb day.
We'll give you a tour
of the bones shattered
by car accidents, femurs
that were blasted by cancer,
rib-cages that split
when the suicide landed.
Only today can you see
the final result of what
you've been thinking about
in dreams and fantasies.

Place yourself with the skeleton,
embrace it, give it a kiss.
This is you when you'll grow up.
How proud your Mom and Dad.
To know you'll be nearby
if the End of Days come,
when you put back on skin,
add flesh and with new blood
pass through the world, again.

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Poem's Score: -1.0

Donald Illich has published work in The Iowa Review, LIT, Passages North, Nimrod, and other journals. He lives in Rockville, MD.

JULY GENIUS

For July 2013, Everyday Genius is pleased to present poems that were rated below 0.4 on the "Poetry Assessor"—a tool that "is designed to determine whether a poem has the characteristics of a professional poem, or, alternatively, an amateur poem.

We publish the poems here, with their scores, not to confirm the Assessor's judgment, but to allow human readers to decide for themselves.