The Festival Of Death Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

On a certain day of the year
all the retired military officers
and their wives
come back to Sanibel Island
decades after their deaths.

The vets wear their medals
on their golf shirts,
and still collect their unfailing pensions
in heaven
or hell.

Some have unhealed wounds
from WWII
expelling shrapnel
and suppurating pus.

Their dead wives,
who were quite conservative in life
- -Reagan Republicans- -
have become
more and more feminist
in the afterlife
and are now more militant
than their warrior husbands.

The wives sit around drinking
and angrily planning
how they will soon take power,
and revenge,
in heaven, hell, and on Earth.

The men can't bear to hear any more
and retreat to the golf course which,
on this day,
is specially reserved
for the dead.

Every body looks terrible
- - skeletal, wormeaten- -
who wouldn't after years underground?
But they're dressed and coiffed well
in the fashion of Ron and Nancy Reagan
circa 1985.

They have
reunion barbecues
with their still-living descendants,
but nobody has much to say

because the dead lack
and cell phone skills.
No need to discuss much.

It is with some relief
for both living and dead
that the gringo Day of the Dead
finally comes to a close.

The quick and the dead
hug each other
and pretend to look forward
to seeing each other
at next year's
Festival of Death.

The living
eagerly return
to their homes
- -some are now retirees
living on Sanibel
as their parents
once did.

They wonder when they'll ever
stop being haunted
by the dead.
"Never, " whisper their buried parents.
"Why can't you just
STAY dead? "
the living ask the dead.

But they know why.
It's because they are
traditional Americans
and the 4th of July,
the Festival of Death,
is the most traditional
tradition
of all.