The carcass dangling in the closet
dates from an earlier age
when everyone read Baudelaire.

Gutted and soaked in brine, drying
to a neutral shade of leather,
it represents the moment when

art and science concurred.
You want me to discard it
after many years of toting it

house to house all over
New England. You claim decadence
has lost its cache, replaced

by ugly populist politics.
I had hoped to finance retirement
by selling this well-cured hide

to a museum of the grotesque.
But in the age of pandemic
most small museums have closed

forever, their collections looted
and sold on eBay for bitcoins.
You claim to recognize this corpse.

Yes, he was famous in his day,
and won an Oscar for his role
as Abraham tending his flock

on screens as wide as billboards.
No disrespect intended but
when I found him dead on my lawn

the profit motive engulfed me.
Alright, I’ll forgo the money
and bury him in the back yard

and hope he doesn’t get restless.
You notice how sweet he smells?

Death must have come so gently

that his organs hardly noticed.
And now his empty skin-sack
has toughened into the softest suede

so that someone elegant, like you,
could fashion him into a coat,
if you don’t mind a little haunting.