I have not met death, only seen him 
on screens: Robert Redford first; ’90s Ghostface; 
then a girl with an ankh around her neck, 
her Eye of Horus liner. 

I have not met death but I have caught him 
in a friend whose fingernails loosen and fall, 
in the four a.m. call from my brother 
after he’s put dreams up his nose. 

At fourteen in a London club—
his breath in the ear of my friend who drank 
from a stranger’s pour, eyes blank. 
I have not met death but I deal with him 

like an absent father figure whose younger 
girlfriend cleared Mom’s bank account—and you 
mistake him for that Old Testament God 
when you feel like Job, Jacob or Rachel. 

I have not made out with Death in the morning 
but dream about him next to me in the car, 
my son in the back seat, my mother blue 
in her bed clutching a remote like a cross, 

my grandmother in a casket shaped like a dove. 
Death likes to call sometimes and hang up after 
a long pause, after hearing me say hello, 
who is this? 

I have yet to sit with a pet who ends its suffering 
by not eating, but I remember the dying 
baby bird we buried as children. In summer, 
Death hates hospitals, clocks out, 

chain-smokes across the street, thinking 
about his own bed, sex, or his ex. Later, Death 
deals cards at the Hard Rock 
bluffing a poker room of sagging skin. 

Death smells like the inside of an old purse—
like shame, Chanel, Billy Joel, and old Band-Aids. 

Bernadette McComish

is a poet and educator who holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in TESOL from Hunter College. She is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, Prophets of Los Angeles (Los Angeles Press, 2024), and two chapbooks: The Book of Johns (Dancing Girls Press, 2018) and Florence Nightingale’’s Lost Log (Lily Poetry Review, 2021).

Her poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and published in notable journals such as Bowery Gothic, The Cortland Review, Kali’s Moksha, The Los Angeles Press, Minyan Magazine, Peregrine, The Rising Phoenix Review, Slipstream, Storyscape, Sunday Salon, and Waxing and Waning (print edition, Issue 4: Trauma & Resilience), among others. In 2022, her poem “Letter from the Past” won the Kali’s Moksha Prize in Poetry.

Bernadette teaches high school in Los Angeles, produces the Poetry Brothel Los Angeles, and serves as the immersive events manager at The Poetry Society of New York.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Letter from the Past by Bernadette McComish in Kali’s Moksha (2022 Poetry Prize Winner)

⚡ How to Visit Felix by McComish in The Los Angeles Press (Volume 7, the sacred; Winter 2022/23)

⚡ Four Poems in The Cortland Review (Issue 50, February 2011): “Sleepless”; “Eve”; “Winter”; and “Night Pieces”

⚡ A Psalm of What Happens When I Submit to Love in Sunday Salon (“Spill” issue, September 2010)