My Living Will and Testament, 2019

Burn me.

Burn me inside the crematorium, when I go.

Burn me alongside the Kentucky coal my ancestors excavated.

Burn me with twigs from a pine tree grown in the Smokey Mountains.

Burn me with my favorite Bob Dylan Record -

all thirty-eight of them.

Burn me with a chunk of splintered wood from the old pews at Rockford Baptist Church.

Burn me with Rick Kushinski's favorite fishing lure.

Burn me with a piece of plastic siding from the Knoxville trailer I was born in.

Burn me wrapped in duck canvas smothered with rabbit skin glue.

Burn me with a number two pencil and every single one of my brushes.

Burn me with all my favorite American novels and unfinished drawings.

Burn me with a single strand of hair from my sister, Kirra.

Burn me with the garter worn by whomever becomes the love of my life.

Burn me with a single marshmallow.

Burn me with acid free archival grade paper.

Burn me.

Brush the dust and ash into an empty can of Showboat pork & beans my grandfather ate.

Mix me with the dirt off Eagleton ballpark's home plate, and the topsoil of Allen's gravesite.

Spread some of me on the top of Pine Mountain, KY

and let some of me float down the current of Greasy Creek.

Seal what's left in the Showboat can and put it on display inside of the Knoxville Museum of Art -

set on a floating shelf made completely from Oriented Strand Board.

Print this writing on acid free paper and have it framed with museum glass and hung next to the can,

next to what's my last & final work of art,

next to me.