SHACHATH
Not lifted up by big black wings or slit down diagonally with a single stroke of the scythe / Not escorted through a stone portal in the woods with a keystone baring the resemblance of a mother’s ring adorned with five unique rhinestones / Not an old man in clean white robes reciting names from a list written in italic silver letters on a never ending scroll / Not a familiar escort / Like your sixth grade English teacher who taught you how to read novels & bullshit your way through a research paper / Or a late famous person making an end credit cameo / Or any one of your numerous grandmothers who were each beautiful for their own special reasons / Not a talking animal of any kind / No wizened owl or innocent stray dog who spends his afterlife escorting newcomers across the threshold / Not a single spirit came to me that August afternoon when I needed them to help me up as I was crushed beneath the weight of her big black cloak / If she was listening she was listening to my mother / Who held my face together & counted to ten again & again / And if she was there & I just couldn’t see her / I hope I made a good first impression.
RJ Equality Ingram lives next to a cemetery in Portland, Oregon & works as a necromancer for Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette. They have two MFAs in creative writing from Saint Mary's College of California & a BFA from Bowling Green State University. Their second poetry collection Peacock Lane is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing & their debut poetry collection The Autobiography of Nancy Drew was also published by White Stag in 2024. They are a poetry reader for Yes Yes Books & a regular contributor of the Nerd Rage: The Great Debates podcast. More work can be found in Deep Overstock, Voicemail Poems & Phoebe Journal among others. Photographs of their cats Twyla & Senator Padme Amidala as well as their little free library can be found on Instagram @RJ_Equality