The Dead Mother’s Last Review
Edvard Munch, The Dead Mother (1899) The Dead Mother’s Last Review Munch painted grief, then grief grew legs, and crawled around the room. His mother died; the rumors lived, and death acquired a womb. They say the bed remembered her, the walls retained the score. Art critics came to pick the bones and charged admission at the door. The painting stares. The dead don’t blink. The living do, instead. We pay good money to feel worse about being happy we’re not dead. Perhaps the dead are better off. No critics, no encore, no relatives explaining what you ought to be sad for. Munch knew the family business: you inherit more than genes. Sometimes all your mother leaves you is a room that she never cleans. And history, that ghoul in gloves, will pick a wound to dress. The dead mother gets immortality. The living? They get less. ----- This ekphrastic poem prompted by the Munch painting above and those haunted writers over at DVerse Poets Pub. ©2026 Christopher Reilley I would love t...
