Cuirass Or Catafalque? (A Prose Poem)

(for a digital collage by James Koehnline, posted Jan.14,2025) ... ... ... ... ... ... Looking at James Koehnline's picture of imaginary undersea creatures, my noggin started riffing on words like 'carapace' and 'casque.' A living thing crafts a seemingly fanciful covering to protect its vulnerable innards, sort of like an ornate treasure chest. Being encased in such proud armor ('cuirass') , the creature swaggers through times of blood and thunder. Ultimately the undissolved remains will remain like a 'catafalque'--- a fancy casket displayed as a memorial. The hypertrophied covering will become death's cenotaph and loom in the land of the living. By a wild coincidence, right around the time I was jotting down those 'C's, my friend John Olson was writing a prose poem, taking a riff on 'M-words' in a different direction. Apropos of carapaces, Fabienne Collignon writes: 'The fetish is a carapace: it is a fixed thing—it endures; it has an originating event—and a thing which fixes, has ordering power.' Mmm... mm-hmm... hmm-mm.