Davidson Garrett
Death in Harlem Hospital with Straussian Overtones: 1986
In Memory of Richard Jurgis
No operatic good-bye
the morning you died
of AIDS; only a deep sigh
of grief. I then cried
taxiing home,
a long autumnal ride
past the hidden dome
of the cathedral. My
brain began its comb
for a tidy reply
to white-lie amend
& demystify
death. Couldn’t pretend
with an Elektra-mind—
but did violently rend
all excuses designed
to disguise. Your cold
dead corpse—reclined
in a morgue of mold
alone & battered—
your Queens’ mother I told,
was shattered!
Davidson Garrett is the author of To Tell the Truth I Wanted to be Kitty Carlisle and Other Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Southern Low Protestant Departure: A Funeral Poem (Advent Purple Press, 2015), and King Lear of the Taxi: Musings of a New York City Actor/Taxi Driver (Advent Purple Press in 2006). His poems have appeared in Big City Lit, Marco Polo Arts Mag, The Stillwater Review, Third Wednesday, and Xavier Review, among others, and in the anthologies Pears, Prose and Poetry (Eggplant Press, 2011) and Beyond The Rift: Poets of the Pallisades (The Poet’s Press, 2010). Davidson is an actor and cab driver and lives in New York.
This poem appeared in To Tell the Truth I Wanted to be Kitty Carlisle and Other Poems.