Authors: Edward Hirsch
One Metro card one Massachusetts driver’s license
The body is of a well-developed well-nourished
Average frame 182 pounds 70 inches
White male
The nose and facial bones are palpably intact
The trachea is in the midline
The torso is unremarkable
There are no injuries
To his upper and lower extremities
His genitalia show a normal circumcised male
Postmortem Changes
There is moderate symmetrical rigor mortis
On the upper and lower extremities neck and jaw
Lividity is pink posterior and fixed
The body is cool
Subsequent to refrigeration
Evidence of Injuries
External and Internal
None
His brain weighed 1530 grams
And had a glistening leptomeninges
The cerebral hemispheres were symmetrical
His heart weighed 380 grams
The left ventricular measured 1.3 cm
And the right measured 0.5 cm thick
His right lung weighed 1000 grams
His left lung weighed 700 grams
The bronchi were slightly hyperemic
His liver weighed 2130 grams
His gallbladder contained 8 ml
Of green viscus bile without stones
His spleen weighed 440 grams
There were no enlarged lymph nodes
The bone marrow was unremarkable
His right kidney weighed 180 grams
His left kidney weighed 190 grams
His bladder contained 250 ml of straw-colored urine
His stomach contained 20 ml of bloody fluid
His vermiform appendix was present
His small and large intestines were unremarkable
Specimens were submitted for histologic evaluation
Specimens were submitted for toxicological evaluation
There was no postmortem radiology
Sexual assault kit was made and prepared
DNA card prepared pulled scalp hair and fingerprints
Were taken and retained on file
Special consideration for autopsy was done
Without water all utensils and preparation were made
To remove and provide all blood or fluids back to the body
He loved twisting rides on roller coasters
Coins fell from his pockets
When he was upside down
He loved tossing quarters into claw games
The noisy clang of slot machines
The soft light of casinos
He loved Nickel City in Northbrook
Twenty games for a buck he played
Four hundred games in an hour
I sat at the bar drinking a Diet Coke
And reading Apollinaire while he hurtled
From game to game in Dave & Buster’s
He did not like family vacations in Wisconsin
That trip to Puerto Rico was a disaster
Thanksgiving in Texas did not elicit thanks
He loved Six Flags and Sea World
At Disneyworld he met the Ninja Turtles
I once took him to a Power Rangers concert
It surprised me how much he loved
Retracing Columbus’s journey to the New World
On a high school field trip
He adored cruising back into Rome
And he condescended to me
Because I’d never been to Lisbon
He loved absinthe he said he drank it once
In Europe it tasted decadent
Like a girl who smelled of licorice and smoke
He loved the way the Mediterranean
Spread out and spanned the centuries
He loved to walk through the ruins
He loved his 2000 green Acura Integra
Which he drove at high speeds
On deserted roads and winding highways
He loved pretending he could play the hi-hat
And crash cymbal like Travis Barker
The tattooed drummer for Blink-182
He loved the metal bands we heard
On Randall’s Island in 2006
Disturbed Atreyu and Bad Acid Trip
He never gave up watching
Dragon Ball Z
Pokémon
and
Rocko’s Modern Life
He loved the moment in
The Boondock Saints
When Murphy says
we’re sorta like 7-Eleven
We’re not always doing business
But we’re always open
He thought Massachusetts and Connecticut
Were boring states there was nothing
To do there he loved New York City
Something was always going on
He loved the Yankees and the Giants
He hated the Red Sox and the Patriots
He loved strong coffee specialty beers
Tamar’s oatmeal cookies California burgers
Spicy Thai Indian and Mexican food
Dogs were his natural friends
He bet all his money on the long shot
At the racetrack he won big a couple of times
He loved his twenty-second birthday
Above all others it was the night of nights
Night of celebration
Gabe was my best friend
Gabe was my right-hand man
Gabe was my wingman
I could tell you a lot of stories
I wrote them down we did everything
Together I think I’ll drop it
And tell you what it felt like
To be with Gabe
On his twenty-second birthday
We went to a tattoo parlor
To watch an Ultimate Fighting match
On pay-per-view
We pooled four hundred bucks
And bet it on the underdog Cain Velasquez
Gabe said his head looks like a brick
We needed him to beat the UFC heavyweight champ
Brock Lesnar the baddest man on the planet
I once saw him pulverize a guy
I was nervous because everyone was shouting
About the killer in the octagon
And everything was on the line
But Gabe just gave me that little smirk
Of his you know the one I mean
It said
we got this
That night we won big
We won really big
We pocketed eight hundred bucks
We danced on the tables
While others drank themselves under them
We painted the town red
We bounced over to a club downtown
It was so crowded no one was getting in
But Gabe convinced the doorman
We were part of the wedding party
Just like in the movie
Wedding Crashers
It was an after-party for a Chinese wedding
Gabe kept telling everyone
We were distant relatives of the bride and groom
We were just wearing our regular clothes
Jeans and t-shirts but Gabe was insistent
He had a baby face people wanted to believe him
Even when they knew he was lying
But once we got inside the party
The Chinese girls could barely speak English
And so we couldn’t talk to them
We picked up Pepi too at the end of the night
We jumped on the backs of some monster
Garbage trucks to hitch a ride
The garbage men chased after us with baseball bats
But they were too fat to catch us
I can still hear them wheezing after us
We ended up at Union Square at dawn
Gabe headed off with his last forty bucks
Where are you going
I told him
That’s your last cash why don’t you
Save some of it for tomorrow
but he said
We’ve just had the night of our lives
And these homeless guys deserve a good breakfast
He bought two pies and twenty-four donuts
And handed them out to the homeless men in Union Square
When I’m standing in line at the DMV
And the stoner next to me
Starts ranting about his parole officer
The dude has anger management issues
He’s profiling me I couldn’t get there
Because my grandmother was sick
When his buddy rolls into Big Nic’s wearing
Cargo shorts and an Oscar the Grouch t-shirt
And I slip him a fifty-dollar bill
When one of his goofball friends swears
He will never take hard drugs again
And then drops three tabs of acid
And winds up in an institution in Tennessee
When I recite
Surprised by joy
Impatient as the Wind
And think about Wordsworth’s daughter Catherine
His six-year-old son Thomas his daughter Dora
Whose death caused him to quit
When someone’s nephew someone’s
Brother’s oldest son a drunken teenager
Gets stuck on the railroad tracks
When I see fresh-faced soldiers
Hurrying off the plane in Atlanta
And everyone begins to clap
When the truck swerves into my lane
When lightning strikes a tree
While I am walking across a field
When the young anesthesiologist
Puts a needle into my arm
And I start to go under
My friends studied him in high school
As the inventor of Polish poetry
A sixteenth-century humanist
Who translated the psalms into rhymed verse
And believed in meeting the world
With equanimity
But the poor bastard changed his mind
When Death swaddled up
His two-and-a-half-year-old daughter
I love him for calling on griefs
And laments from every quarter
O tears of Heraclitus O dirges of Simonides
To help him mourn the child
Whom Oblivion obliterated
With such uncanny force
We learned in school that funeral elegies
Laments and threnodies
Were reserved for big public occasions
And so the classical poets sang
Of heroes who fell valiantly in battle
Military leaders and philosopher-kings
But Kochanowski could not bear
To see his daughter’s flowered dress
Her smooth ribbons her gold-clasped belt
And so he called on Urszula
To come back and haunt him again
As a shadow a dream or a ghost
Wisdom for me was castles in the air
I’m hurled like all the others
From the topmost stair
Yamanoue worried that his son’s soul
Would not know the right road
To take in the underworld
And so he offered to pay the fee
Of the courier from the realms below
To carry Furuhi on his back
A father broods that his son
Is wandering on the wrong road
Lost in the otherworld without a coat
I beseech you with offerings
Be true and lead him
On the straight road to heaven
Izumi could not understand
How her daughter could be cremated
And then vanish into the empty sky
When even the snow
The fragile white snow
Falls downward into this world
During the memorial service
She was distressed by the temple bell
That kept ringing and ringing
Listen to the resonance
Listen to the sound of longing
The sound of loss
Why did he have to keep striking
That holy bell for Naishi
Each strike was a blow
The grieving poets are distracted
By so many thoughts
The wrong road the falling snow the bell
I wonder if the
Pearl
poet
Was grieving for his lost daughter
Or mourning on commission
For someone else’s gem
Whom he turned into a dream vision
Of spotless radiance
I understand the trope the fantasy
Of the erstwhile father the jeweler
Who is so caught
In the chill grip of grief
Over his poor imprisoned pearl
That he falls asleep at her grave
And discovers his precious
As a grown woman
Glittering on the other side
I’m a little rocky on the theology
But I like the idea that a pearl
Is also a two-year-old child
Who is also a royal young woman
Who is also the immortal soul
Who is also the heavenly city
Love could still hurt him
When he awoke in a green garden
Where she lay buried
I wish I could believe in the otherworld
I wish I could believe in a place
Of reunions outside of memory
The
Pearl
poet was baffled
By what he saw in a mound of earth
In the darkened dungeon of sorrow
I do not understand how she could write
Anything but elegies for the stillborn
And God-struck
Margaretha Susanna von Kuntsch
Lost eight sons and five daughters
I do not understand how she could stand
Anything Christian or otherwise
Desperation spoke to me in her voice
And I carried around her poem
Occasioned by the Death of My Fifth Born
Little Son the Little Chrysander or CK
On the 22nd of November 1686
Where she compares herself
To the warrior-king Agamemnon
Since all her hopes and joys
Had burned in the tomb
With her ninth child
Sacrificed to the knife of death
Who will give me the courage
Who will sharpen my crafty pen
When my blood is stirred
To try to describe my feelings in words