Book of the Dead

they peeled him back,
those priests,
hands slick with oils,
dropped his heart
in a jar like an olive.

wrapped him tight,
packed him for eternity—
knives, chariot,
songs he’d need
to reach the fields of reeds.

he was a king, see.
they sent him down the river,
a dark slip
past gods with scales,
who’d weigh his soul with a feather,
decide if he rose or sank.

did he?
you decide ,
see someone stuck
his ass on an
airplane,

and here we are—
you, me, and him,
under the hum of fluorescents,
his afterlife a glass box
at the Houston Museum,
third floor, near the dinosaurs.

some kid taps the glass.
the guard yawns.
and the pharaoh,
what’s left of him, stares back,
like, this?
this is it?

dragged halfway through time,
from Nile to Gulf Coast,
from Memphis to Houston,
pharaoh to artifact,
a kingdom to a display.