Final Arrangements by Mickey J. Corrigan

Everyone tells you:
Death does not give,
Death takes away.

In this short collection of easy to read poetry, Mickey J. Corrigan explores burial practices around the globe. Why be buried in the same old way when you might choose to follow Japanese tradition and allow your family to pick through your ashes to retrieve your bones? Or you can opt for a final party like they do in Mexico, honoring the dead with lively music, food and drink. You could ask your beloved to dance with your old bones, an ancient practice in Madagascar. These honest, dark poems have moments of strange humor as they illustrate for readers how various cultures help their dead return to the elements of creation. Ultimately, Final Arrangements is about the body and letting go of it. How we do this is our choice.

Yet
after all the funerals
you've attended
the masses and wakes
hospices, hospitals
morgues, funeral homes
morticians, interments
cremations, scattered ashes…
there's more for you:
Death comes
with options!


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes neo-noir with a dark humor. Novellas and novels have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry has appeared in Work to a Calm, Flatbush Review, Fourth & Sycamore, R.kv.r.y Quarterly Literary Journal, Penny Ante Feud, ink sweat & tears, And So Yeah, and elsewhere. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK.

"Mickey J. Corrigan’s Final Arrangements invites us to consider rituals invoked to give form and sense to what cannot be known. To stare into a hole in the ground. To bring close thoughts it is most natural to turn from. To not banish the abstraction by which death is stolen from our experience. Humorous, biting, literal and elegant, this collection does everything but shy away." Athena Sasso; author of The Account in Question and Other Stories

"The afterlife won't be worth visiting unless there are Mickey J. Corrigan books." Michael Cantwell; author of the True Justice series

"In America where death is big business, the main business is keeping the dead as far away from us as possible. Final Arrangements takes us on a wild, fascinating tour of funeral rituals worldwide, to places where participation is hands-on and intimate." Jade Bos; author of Hookers and Cake