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Moving Day 
Bodies get buried, their homes get tossed 
Into cartons marked Thrift Shop #3. 
"The seller bears most of the closing cost." 
Is your moving van big enough for a ghost? 
Do your packers charge extra for memory? 
Bodies get buried, their homes get tossed. 
A seller's market, but death can accost 
The most neon of brokers and set its own fee. 
"The seller bears most of the closing cost." 
The floors you can sweep, the fridge defrost, 
But corners stay sticky with what I can't see. 
Bodies get buried, their homes get tossed. 
This bridge cracks and sways when it's crossed. 
Burn it? Yes, but the flames singe me: 
"The seller bears most of the closing cost." 
Checks checked, forms signed, lawyers paid, Edens lost. 
But this door can't be locked with any key. 
Bodies get buried, their homes get tossed- 
Catch, seller, and bear the closing cost. 
Heather Dubrow 
Poet's Statement 
I wrote this lyric when I was in the process of selling and clearing out
my parents' 
apartment, which did indeed have closets jammed to overflowing with memories
of them, of my mother's final illness, of growing up in New York. Here, as
so 
often when I write about particularly stressful personal experiences, I reach
for a 
traditional form. (Similarly, I am struck by the fact that almost all my
poems on 
the death of my ex-husband were prose poems.) 
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