Dave Bonta's "Last rites" imagines the moment of death from the inside, in four short, strange steps. It begins with something plain and physical: the speaker's breath rattles, and the pigeons fall silent, as if the world outside has noticed. From there the poem drifts into stranger territory. Doors become "great friends with the dead," a odd line that suggests thresholds and passages, the way the dead are always going through them.
Then the speaker does something startling: "I eat my afterself / and depart into story." Judging by the wording, the person is absorbing whatever they will leave behind, and becoming a tale told by others. The last couplet is the most unexpected. A coroner will examine not a body but the speaker's "joy," which hints that what mattered most was feeling alive.
The mood is calm, dreamlike and a little darkly funny. The speaker seems unafraid, even quietly pleased, facing death with curiosity rather than grief.