by Andy Young

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!

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A couple faces one another
as if in conversation.
This is how they were found.

Now they lie in vitrines
like fish in facing tanks.
Could not speak if they

could speak. They were
dressed for their death passage,
not to be specimens in glass.

Her bare breasts shine
like doorknobs. Linen
wraps for the poor, gold

masks for the rich, eyes
so lifelike excavators
gasped when they brushed

the dust away. The revolution
left no money for excavation;
thousands of mummies

still lie in burrowed tunnels
under the houses and roads.
The dead do not ponder

revolutions, but they like
to sometimes be considered.
Small mourning statues

were found in the tombs,
meant to eternally weep
at their side. One man

is a merchant with a Horus crown.
Tolemic, someone says.
Our son points to another’s

thickly outlined eyes.
He is awake, he says,
but does not answer.

A stone girl, five years old,
too poor for a golden crown;
my daughter, also five,

asks if they’re the same
size—yes, almost exactly.
For a while, this is how

our children will think of death:
gilded bodies that keep their shape,
wide-eyed and adored.

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Andy Young's second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, was published in October 2024 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is also the author of All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014) and four chapbooks. She grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans, where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared in Identity Theory, Drunken Boat, and Michigan Quarterly Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her work has been translated into several languages, featured in classical and electronic music, in flamenco and modern dance performances, and in jewelry, tattoos, and public buses. See andyyoung.org.

by Andy Young

A couple faces one another

as if in conversation.

This is how they were found.

Now they lie in vitrines

like fish in facing tanks.

Could not speak if they

could speak. They were

dressed for their death passage,

not to be specimens in glass.

Her bare breasts shine

like doorknobs. Linen

wraps for the poor, gold

masks for the rich, eyes

so lifelike excavators

gasped when they brushed

the dust away. The revolution

left no money for excavation;

thousands of mummies

still lie in burrowed tunnels

under the houses and roads.

The dead do not ponder

revolutions, but they like

to sometimes be considered.

Small mourning statues

were found in the tombs,

meant to eternally weep

at their side. One man

is a merchant with a Horus crown.

Tolemic, someone says.

Our son points to another’s

thickly outlined eyes.

He is awake, he says,

but does not answer.

A stone girl, five years old,

too poor for a golden crown;

my daughter, also five,

asks if they’re the same

size—yes, almost exactly.

For a while, this is how

our children will think of death:

gilded bodies that keep their shape,

wide-eyed and adored.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Andy Young is the author of four chapbooks, including the just-published John Swenson Dynamicron (Dancing Girl Press), and a full-length poetry collection, All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014). She teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Southern Review, Waxwing, and Prairie Schooner, and has been recognized in contests by Black Warrior Review, the Auburn Witness Poetry Award, and Consequence Magazine’s Women Writing War.