John Brantingham
Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War: The Beds of Death
My dead stand with me to look at depictions
of Goya’s dead, lumps under blanket, who have
been waiting for the respect of the grave.
My dead don’t cry for them, but for the woman
left alive, covered with her own blanket,
who will walk with her own dead the rest
of her life. This memory of loss will dress
her every day and cover her every night.
My dead speak to me about her courage
about how she will find meaning in her world,
enough to keep on. How else do you see
that every person is a potential savage
and keep your town, your people, yourself fed
and strong? How else do you keep your humanity?
John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He is a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.