A Last Supper

It’s a bet of long odds that my final words

will be notable or recorded,

so let the family gathered about my bed

ask what I’d like to eat--anything at all--

while I still have some sense about me.

And it will be fried clams a dutiful child

will rush across the city to find

and bring back warm and in the nick of time,

a mound of whole bellies, both commonplace

and indulgent, on the bedside table.

A little grit will be a small price to pay

to refine the iconography: gnarled

fingers crossed and golden as I sail off

in that red and white checkered cardboard boat

through the sacred, greasy incense of summer.

Kevin Casey is the author of And Waking...(Bottom Dog Press, 2016), and American Lotus (Glass Lyre Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Kithara Prize. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Rust+Moth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Connotation Press, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Ted Kooser's syndicated column 'American Life in Poetry.' For more, visit andwaking.com.

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