**Depiction of Death**
Report from the Besieged City
In the ninth week of the siege, we stop burying our dead,
stop digging trenches for our bodies no one can count,
stop digging trenches for our bodies no one can count,
and begin to stack them like sandbags, like odd-shaped bricks,
around the part of our city we yet control, the part
the enemy can not enter, the part where they pour
their treasured mortars, their precious bombs. We stack and stack
and stack the bodies we still love. Like old-time farmers
piling field rocks, we layer bodies into fences,
into walls. Once their rigor passes and they relax,
they fit together easily, these blended families,
limbs settling on limbs, heads lolling in the long sleep,
except on the top row. There we make our beloved
sit upright and face the enemy and welcome them
to death. We die barricading ourselves with our dead.
We think surely they will see, surely they will care.
About the Author
Cecil Morris retired after teaching high school English for 37 years and now tries to write what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) to enjoy. He and his indulgent partner, mother of their children, spend winters in California’s arid Central Valley and summers on Oregon’s cool coast. He has poems in or forthcoming from Hole in the Head Review, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Talking River Review, Willawaw Journal and other literary magazines.