Don’t believe this story. It is fake news.
Jerry Garcia did not return from the land of the dead
with three pennies in his hand,
touched by those subtle fingers, rubbed smooth.
I didn’t free him from his coffin on the sea.
When he came to me, dressed in white,
paler than before, we didn’t walk along
the high road, we didn’t stop and go inside a church.
No princess, no dragon, no heads on spikes.
None of that happened. We sat down to drink coffee
in a Starbuck’s near my house,
though I would have preferred the Local Blend.
“The wi-fi’s better here,” he said, and anyway, he was buying.
He told me that it sucked being dead – the food is dry
and there’s no drugs – but at least he didn’t have to live
in America under Trump. Remember, this is fake news
made up by that failing poet, Steve Klepetar. Sick guy. Sad.

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Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include Family Reunion (Big Table), A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), and How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps).