There’s Always Something

            After his near death experience,
Al Pacino confirms “there’s nothing there” after we die –
            “you’re gone”

He confirms as if
we’d all already agreed
the afterlife didn’t rock a little bit
like a chair on the porch
of a country store, air
smelling softly of apple spice
straw brooms and the candle
whose wax drips slowly
onto the floor pressing
its seal on the stamped
envelope of our lives. As if
we all already believe that
when we depart we will not
enter a foyer and hear
a knock when answered
the stomping heels
of flamenco dancers
and brass band
hung brightly all night above
us like string lanterns.
How may we believe you,
carte blanche, Al Pacino
who visited death
like a factory tour
and returned like a door
to door salesman peddling
an end to the miracle akin
to that nothing of when
we were children hiding
quietly under old blankets
in grandmother’s attic so long
we feared they forgot about us
in that pitch black as lungs
filled with must and all
we could hear was that empty
suck in the walled pipes
as the last little bit of liquid
light slipped in its vortex
down the claw foot tub of life.
So how can we believe you, Al
because even that nothing
was something, right?

*

Carlin Corsino is a poet from North Carolina who writes about the everyday and absurdities of American life. They are recently featured or forthcoming in 3ELEMENTS and KAKALAK.