Tuesday Tombstone

A poem by Molly Peacock

Do not move that blank
square of a gravestone
off the calendar. Leave 
my vacant appointment

as it is. That space 
is just the shape of a tablet
I feel my way toward 
as a child in a graveyard

moves toward the face 
of a ruined monument
pocked and slanted,
its letters half-erased,

puts both arms around it
and pulls to help lift it—
a standing appointment 
trying to stand.

MOLLY PEACOCK's latest book is Alphabetique (2014). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, and other magazines.