Tuesday poem #134 : Rachel Loden : At the Grave of Pigpen

        September 8, 1945 – March 8, 1973
              —Alta Mesa Memorial Park, Palo Alto, CA      



Who gives this woman
to be buried

with this man? I do.
I lie in the green grass

next to you, Pigpen,
without flowers,

not to be star-crossed
but to be forgotten.

Rachel Loden is the author of Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta), which was shortlisted for both the PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry and the California Book Award. Loden’s first book, Hotel Imperium (Georgia), won the Contemporary Poetry Series competition and was selected as one of the ten best poetry books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, which called it “quirky and beguiling.” Her new book, Kulchur Girl: Notes from Berkeley 1965 is just out from Vagabond Press in the ‘deciBels’ series, edited by Pam Brown. She is working on an investigative memoir, Finding Krupskaya. Three new poems are in the current Journal of Poetics Research.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan