To Love the Dead Is Easy
by Justin Evans
They are the last to inconvenience us
prattling on about the neighbor with his
noisy dogs. They are never late for dinner,
never arrive empty-handed. When memory
is all that is left to us, theirs is never
the raised hand objecting to our version
of history. When we want to gently slip into
the soft folds of sleep they rarely make
things difficult. Yes, the dead are
easy to love, and we don’t do enough to
thank them for their good manners.
“‘Empty’ was born out of efforts for what I hope will be my next book, a discussion of how the event of death is treated within a small community and within the individual. I wanted to address the absurdity of trying to limit or pigeonhole the way people grieve loss in their lives. In ‘To Love the Dead is Easy’ I was salvaging a poem-gone-wrong, or one that obviously does not fit the tone of what I want my book to be. They were written very close together and I think the second poem was blessed with all of the sarcasm I could not use in the first.” —Justin Evans
Justin Evans was born and raised in Utah. After serving in the Army, he returned to Utah where he studied history and English. He currently lives in rural Nevada with his artist wife and their sons, where he teaches at the local high school. His most recent books are Cross Country (WordTech, 2019) which he wrote with the poet Jeff Newberry, and All the Brilliant Ideas I’ve Ever Had (Aldrich Books, 2020). Recent poems have appeared in diode and San Pedro River Review. In early 2022, Justin was granted an Artist Fellowship from the Nevada Arts Council.