Mummy

[Delta40]

Parched.
Dry as a bone,
her withered hand
crumbles away like
putrified dust.
Dehydrated particles,
sapless flakes
pepper her lifeless stretch
like a dessicant shroud
and settle upon my hair.
I sneeze particles of her aridity
and momentarily moisten
the mummified cheek,
before dust spirits warp the spittle
into specks of impoverished shrivels
for her inifinite decomposure.
©

[IceM]

This poem, effective in establishing a dead imagery (and maybe this is a stretch, signaling a death of influence and dwindled importance) seems overtly glum. Your imagery in expressing her death, or deadness, seems beyond dead--your use of "impoverished" captures it well. She is deprived even in death: her remnants "withered," her body a grouping of "dehydrated particles"--as if they didn't have even the luxury of being most--all creates a very powerful image. It's tragic, poignant perhaps, and very effective in soliciting that response.

My parenthetic stretch is perhpas an outlandish interpretation, one I'd only make if I wanted to heavily interpret the poem. But, on a strictly artistic and just-beyond-literal-analysis, it succeeds in its tragic sadness.