A poem that is so lean and so direct, digging deep, radiating out. Simply, profoundly perfection.
Everybody Who is Dead
Frank Stanford
When a man knows another man
Is looking for him
He doesn’t hide.
He doesn’t wait
To spend another night
With his wife
Or put his children to sleep.
He puts on a clean shirt and a dark suit
And goes to the barber shop
To let another man shave him.
He shuts his eyes
Remembers himself as a boy
Lying naked on a rock by the water.
Then he asks for the special lotion.
The old men line up by the chair
And the barber pours a little
In each of their hands.
Estate of Frank Stanford © C.D. Wright
Source: You (Lost Road Publishers, 1979)
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