The Dead Mother’s Last Review
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| 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.
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