Mermer Blakeslee is the author of the novels Same Blood and In Dark Water, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Drawing on her work as a professional skier, she wrote A Conversation with Fear. She was awarded the 2006 Narrative Prize for “Leenie,” an excerpt from her novel When You Live by a River, (Narrative Library, 2012), and was a finalist in Narrative’s First and Second Annual Poetry Contests. Blakeslee lives in the Catskill Mountains with her husband.

Photograph by Rose Mackiewicz.




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How Do We Bury the Dead

by Mermer Blakeslee

how do we bury the dead
stacking up on the patio against our picture window? I can

barely see
over the last body blown here by another cluster bomb—
every forty minutes, every twenty, every ten, every five every four

every three every two every one—
I can no longer see into the garden

what do we do with all these children
lying here outside our kitchen
People on couch
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