Ode to Cheap Taste

Holy is a house of cheaply-framed photos
hung too high. Call it tacky, but when is the divine
ever at eye-level? The clumped mascara, the shimmery shadow
that is holiest of all. What is elegance but a fear
of desire. A Jericho of canned vegetables
from Shop Rite’s Can Can sale. The stuffed animals
on the bed of a grown woman. I have to worship now
only my own ascension? Riding down the log flume:
isn’t it a sacrament? A hot dog, hold the
nostalgia? I will die empty with my abstractions,
my mother never would have said as she lay the night
on the floor of her condominium, looking up
at the studio portraits of her children—the sailor suits,
the flimsy 8th grade graduation gowns—until
we stepped out of them and held her hand
and told her, “You may go now. You may
go.” As she prayed into the carpet
her last wish, that we buy her a coffin even the back
of the room could appreciate, that Las Tías
would run their hands over and say, look how devoted
they were to their mother, look how much
they loved her.