January 2022
Deborah Adelman
adelman.deborah@gmail.com
Bio Note: I was fortunate to spend a good part of my young adulthood wandering and living in various parts of the world and learning new languages. I am now more rooted (thirty years teaching writing, literature and film classes at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, IL) and so life has changed, but I continue to devote most of my time to engaging with and thinking about language in all its forms — the opportunities it offers us to imagine a better world and way of living, as well as the limitations it imposes on us, when trying to communicate with each other. I have published my creative writing in Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, and Other Voices, among other venues.

Modern Woman

Bury me like an ancient Egyptian
wrapped in a sheath of brilliant red,
matching shimmering shoes.
In that great beyond 
everyone will know, this girl knew how to party.
 
Bury me like an ancient Egyptian,
small photos of every man I have loved
taped upside down and backwards to the outside of my coffin,
photo of my big love inside, cozy on my breasts. 
This girl enjoyed her body.
 
Bury me like an ancient Egyptian
Surrounded by art I collected where it was made,
Alebrijes from Tejalapan, pysanky from Chernavitsi,
Tree of Life bowl from the market in Hebron.
This girl of Milwaukee roamed the world.
 
Bury me like an ancient Egyptian.
Inter me with the instruments I could have mastered
if I had listened to my mother and practiced
violin, guitar, the old wooden piano. Why pretend?
This girl had no discipline.
 
Bury me like an ancient Egyptian,
my coffin bursting at the seams
stuffed with the volumes I could have written
if I had learned to focus. If.
This girl got distracted.
 
Bury me like an ancient Egyptian,
first lock of baby hair snipped from my daughter’s head,
first tooth my son hid from the fairy,
each inside a hand, clasped for all time. I almost waited too long but
this girl got to raise two children.
 
Bury me like an ancient Egyptian, 
map of the cosmos inscribed on my coffin lid. 
Oh blessed map, guide my soul quickly to the next world 
on a straight and narrow path. Keep me from meandering 
as I did in this one.
©2022 Deborah Adelman
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