THE RAVEN REVIEW
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • FAQ
  • Submit
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Volume I >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume II >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume III >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume IV >
      • Issue I
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • FAQ
  • Submit
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Volume I >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume II >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume III >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume IV >
      • Issue I

Coffin Lining

by Alexandra Grunberg
It is not much of a cradle,
but if you’re already asleep
I don’t know why you’d want to be
protected from the arms that hold you.
I don’t know what comfort can be found
in words like “plasticized” and “lining.”
You would look just as peaceful without.
 
​But there’s a comfort 
in completing the puzzle
and ordering all the pieces.
Even if I can grasp the picture –
a green field, a blue sky, a dog –
to see a jagged hole to the wood
table beneath the swath of blue
is as intolerable as a restless death
as inconsequential, as monumental.

It’s these objects you don’t know about
that rock the living to rest.
Knowing someone else has all the pieces,
can fit the 3 to the 1, 2, [ ], 4,
makes the sky a little more blue. 

Alexandra Grunberg is a Glasgow based poet, author, and screenwriter. Her poetry has been published in Honey & Lime and From Glasgow to Saturn She is a postgraduate student in the DFA in Creative Writing programme at the University of Glasgow. Find her online at alexandragrunberg.weebly.com.