“The Funeral” and Other Works by H. Day

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Analog SF, Cardinal Sins, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and The Muse Writers Center in Virginia.

The Funeral

We put the toaster in the paper boat, set it in the water. Predictably,
the paper boat collapses under the weight of the boxy toaster, crumples around it
like a flower at sunset, sinks to the stones lining the bottom of the lake.
It’s hard to bury a toaster properly, pay homage to the service
a household appliance has given one’s family for so many years.

Someday, when robots excavate the ruins of our homes, they’ll wonder
at the ignoble way we discarded these appliances, gape at the savagery
of mobiles and windchimes made from blender blades and cake beaters
hypothesize about the significance of so many televisions and cell phones.
Perhaps they’ll find our toaster, rusted solid after years of being submerged
marvel at the waste, wonder at the ceremony.

Across the Sea

In order to see the bottom of the ocean clearly, treasure hunters
blast high-powered streams of fresh water onto the exploratory site
push aside the sparkling silt and hovering clumps of algae
unlucky cephalopods and slow-paced starfish
long enough to expose the suspected pirate treasure or bit of sunken ship.

These boats scoot over the ocean, piloted by men reading
possibly fictional treasure maps, periodically blasting
new streams of water onto flat, undisturbed sand below, leaving
almost perfectly round blank patches far beneath the surface of the sea
like the massive footprints of some clumsy creature, too blind to see
the panic its random foraging across the ocean floor has caused.

Girlie

A sunset is the inside of a bird’s wing.

Nestled in a soft spectrum of pinks and blues
is the promise of warmth and darkness, the comfort
of a mother’s touch. There is the promise in each night
of the memory of that warm, feathered embrace

a piping night song that sends us to sleep
follows us into our dreams, a lulling series of clucks and chirps
the familiar primal nuzzle behind it all.

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