After-death Images by Tom Daley

after Lorca

I might imagine myself as a scarecrow waving crows away from roadkill. 

I might find my thighs slick as sealskin on a beach where tourists take selfies with nursing seal pups. 

I might see my eyelashes as twigs bearing fruit ruined by a freak frost. 

Or my cornea stained with smoke from smudge pots. 

After death, my hair may arrange itself in the kind of array pens make stashed in a cup on a teacher’s desk. 

I might see myself as moon shadow nicked by giant solar flares. 

Or brownout in a record-breaking February heat in Galveston. 

Or see myself as seagulls crying in the words of a pop song. 

A rat with frozen whiskers.

A machinist for over twenty years, Tom Daley leads writing workshops online and in the Boston area. His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, Fence, Crazyhorse, Witness, and elsewhere. His first book: House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems (FutureCycle Press).