JK Fowler

Funeral Home Ortiz rises like a phoenix from the long-gone ashes of today and I etch a story of sordid consequence. Towering over the mangled stop sign below, along the trailways of the bangles of the cacophonous freeway, it continues unabated and tired, begging to be taken out of business but the bodies keep on coming. Shattered, yellow-tinted windows adorn the one-side allowing for filtered sunlight to enter and the glossy black, rusted fire escape calls out to years of being known as the home of neighborhood death and renewal. Like so many of the forgotten and never named, the innards of Ortiz read like dusty pulp fiction, its faltering light posts knocking on the door to be discarded, for darkness to reign supreme. Bodies have arrived en masse in the past, some with familial attachments, others with the lost remnants of year upon year living without any connection. Floating corpses through our city’s streets, unattached and wandering souls looking for a home found it nowhere but in the run-down, chipping red walls of Funeral Home Ortiz that opened its arms to the never-named, nurtured their bodies and gave them proper burial. People carouse the streets, parlors and cafes surrounding Ortiz, walking past, around and through the sedimented histories of their nameless brethren encased within the three stories of brick and concrete and it watches, knowing that their day too will come. For the lost and forgotten, Funeral Home Ortiz graciously offers home and peace to those that may have never known either.