Existential

Lee Landau

No plagues rain down on us, no sign

of a personal god anywhere, and

instead of standing to

daven

my love’s

snores reach God’s ear

like sound as an organ donation

where I stare and laugh again.

I want an easy death

in my sleep, a fatal heart attack.

no personal

God will ever intervene, no final

decisions about heaven or hell.

Just me reborn as a mound

of ivy set on running up

around the roof of my old home–

picture a stucco, two-story,

1952 house covered–

daring anyone to root out

its existential growth,

folded where the dead

gather, its original color

defaced, framed

now in ivy’s hunter green and hardy,

determined, only

uncertain about the next life.

Lee Landau has been a finalist in four poetry contests. Her work has been published in: Wisconsin Review, Reed Magazine, New Millennium Writings, Poetica, Common Grounds to name a few. By submission-only she has workshopped Sharon Olds, Billy Collins, Dan Halpern, Tom Lux, Dara Weir.