Everyone keeps telling me
my mother looked so pretty
in her casket. They try to assure me
the mortician did a good job.
My mother looked better
alive. She was her prettiest
on holidays. Today at breakfast,
an elder schools me on the beauty
in death. I can listen
for a long time. My grits turn
my catfish soggy. Meanwhile,
she tells me to see death
as a completion, says it’s the start
of something new, then tells me
a story about her grandson,
how he looks so much like her son—
same long fingers, dark skin.
Ali Black
Ali Black is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of the poetry chapbook If It Heals At All (Jacar Press, 2020). The book was selected by Jaki Shelton Green for the New Voices Series and named a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Book Award in poetry. Her writing has appeared in The Atticus Review, jubilat, Literary Hub, The Offing, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Balance Point Studios, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making, teaching, and sharing art. Her debut full-length poetry collection, We Look Better Alive, is forthcoming from Burnside Review Press in 2025.