The Funeral

Digital Collage, 9" x 12"

Alex Garove is an artist-educator based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work is informed by the natural world and relies heavily on arts-based research. Through her artistic process, Alex has explored interdisciplinary connections between the history of scientific understanding, museology, colonialism, botany, and entomology. The resulting artwork fuses a variety of media and techniques including installation, fabrication, digital processes, time-based media, and natural materials. On a normal day in her studio/office, you may find a snakeskin in her flatbed scanner, flowers pressed under stacks of books, insects preserved in alcohol, and a die-cutting machine fabricating vector-based papercuts.

The Funeral

Cla Calabresi

I

one morning, I found it
in the room—abandoned
on the floor, all ruffled.
delivered by my cat— 
a present warmth.
I touched it, touched the chest,
hoped to feel the beat,
then for the beat to rise
in a flicker of wings. it didn’t.

no blood, or wounds. the
eyes still shone ajar,
the feathers floated.
as if it could quiver,
still, pick up a flight.
soft and alive.

I put a ribbon on a box,
the box out of the window,
and thought sometimes
as the days passed
of where and when to bury
a bird. or what to say.
or why they died.
of mornings gone.

II

when I looked out
three days apart
the box was gone.
a gust of wind, perhaps.
perhaps, the cat returned
to claim the gift I didn’t want— 
perhaps, rebirth.
instead I knew
no chance was left
to make amends. over again.

as everytime it rains:
I wake up scared.
my dog’s still stray,
all ruffled, lost,
eating stones and cold
before I take him from the rain -
the pup will bark
across the window,
and he’ll be home again.
do I think I truly miss him,
and not the time I thought
I could be savior of the goodness
in the world, never its loss?

I hate how these things work.
death never ends, what to say
bye for? what to wake up
a dead bird for?
It’s always late for metaphors,
too late to say goodbye—
but if I could I’d say it
still: goodbye. godspeed.
 


		

Author's Bio

Cla Calabresi is an ecofeminist activist, writer, and filmmaker born in Italy. She has lived in Baltimore since 2023, where she has been pursuing a PhD in Feminist Film Theory at Johns Hopkins University. So far, she has published a book of poems in 2022, calledDentro,and won two national literary prizes in her home country. Cla’s most recent short film, “THE SHED”, has been selected for screening at the 2026 Maryland Film Festival. All of her works, either written or directed, focus on subjects at the margins.