Burial Shirt by Joe Couture

Burial Shirt

Prufrock measured life in coffee spoons

‘round here, it’s draughts, cheques, trips to Puerto Plata—

where poor camareras change old boys’ bedsheets

while they binge drinks so cheap they’ll speak of

to fellas who listen, wide-eyed, at the bar back home.

Prufrock was too conscientious for that.

He’d see the parallels between towel cranes

for American dollar bills a Canadian exchanged

and standing at a wicket with mildew in his boots

or while wearing gaudy clusters on calloused fingers.

My yardstick’s a Bluenotes t-shirt I think

randy Prufrock would appreciate. Once white,

too small, eighteen years old (like the boy who bought it).

My burial shirt. The one I wore when I met her, before

stains of knife and nose blood, menses, nursery room paint.

Most time passes immemorably; write, live, tend the dive,

anticipate opening the top drawer for the old go-to,

after she spits out my dreams on the bedroom floor

saying something like, “something that wants out

so badly, should not be consumed.”

Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. Recently, his work has appeared in Unlikely Stories, The Hooghly Review, and Black Hole News. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social