The Night Uncle
In the body bag I knew his mouth: Beneath his lip, a rip of beard, Between his teeth—four chipped to perfect Pi— The entrance wound to Bedlam. I slipped my quarter in. Look at our family picture: lined-up Peach pits, the sky’s three-starred belt. We dropped shame for one photograph. After asylum, he sold shoes. His blood-stained carpet whistled When he hit the bottom rung. Once I tried to swim him back but the sea Slipped. With his face beside the dune, His bubble breath was gaseous, gas and nothing.
Jayne Warren is a Boston-based poet and writer. Her work has been published in Seventh Wave, Plainsongs, Breath and Shadows, and an audio version of a poem was featured in the Belfast International Arts Festival.
