by Mary Birnbaum

---

Unlike the old, the dead
feel no bone-deep pain.

The weight in the skull,
the locked wreck in the back,

hip’s lightning flinch. No,
death slides us into spectral

ease. The whiter your living
hair, your cataracts, the more

you struggle, aching, against
midnight waking, silence

mercilessly transparent.
Ghosts look, curious, into

the face of your mind,
seeing palace, paths, mists,

where they may enter; and
you see them, eyes, lips, solid

as the moment: night’s
breath of traffic, the waiting.

---

Mary Elizabeth Birnbaum was born, raised, and educated in New York City. She has studied poetry at the Joiner Institute in UMass, Boston. Mary’s translation of the Haitian poet Felix Morisseau-Leroy has been published in The Massachusetts Review, the anthology Into English (Graywolf Press), and in And There Will Be Singing, An Anthology of International Writing by The Massachusetts Review, 2019 as well. Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Lake Effect, J-Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Soundings East, and Barrow Street.