Death, Please Wait

DEATH, PLEASE WAIT by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is full of wrenching details and remarkable humor. A teenage romance leads to a long marriage, followed by the husband's violent dementia and death. The intimate workings of love are laid bare. The couple is separated from the start (he is in a nursing home), but we see them together through all the years of their union, the details of which are so specific that we see ourselves as well. We see the ambivalence and the steadfastness of love in all its phases. The poetry is powerful and raw and original, full of flowers and the "whine of anonymous farts." The range of emotion and expression is astonishing.