May 3rd (Q Day #50): Día de los Muertos Mask
by Robert Minicucci
This mask, purchased from an artist friend living in Ohio with his wife (a great writer),
is my Double-Crested Blue Jay to viral insults and assaults.
Greet gray death with color.
“We all die a little each day as we live,” chirps the happy skull. “It’s always close.”
A dark flock constantly circling.
When it gets closer, I will make one last
poke-of-the-finger at a scraggly crow’s short sharp beak
just as the rest of the murder encircles me and feasts.
This mask protects or smothers. Depends on your choice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Minicucci lives near Exeter, New Hampshire, with his wife, two of his three children, and a brindle rescue hound named Josie. He came back to poetry after reading One of Us Is Lost by Robert Dunn (a local Portsmouth poet), and Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon, whom he met in 2018 at a University of New Hampshire reading. He’s had work published in the New Hampshire-based poetry zine Good Fat, as well as the online journals Spank the Carp and Rat’s Ass Review. He is on twitter @robertminicucci when he’s not working on his chapbook.
Silver Birch Press 