Avunculi Mortuus

Invoke our backyard names

not listed on our certificates

or the family bible’s flyleaves—

Lick the silver gilding

without paling your tongue—

Call us, call me as I knew myself—

Roxy, sister to five, aunt of seven, 

first to leave, cigarette specter 

in the rectory, steaming 

white vestments in advance

of Easter’s long weekend slog—

Hours of incense and candle

wax on our hands, Fr. Realaux

asking us to wish the Baptists

and assorted other heathens 

a soft landing in Satan’s lap,

a deathful joy because we knew

to barter a better afterlife—

Colorful eggs in the yard

rattle with sweet antiseptics,

but as a ghost, I’ve discovered

the cancer of faith—Lungs

sunk by black sacs, tumors 

dotting my brain, believing

the boulder would roll back,

but I vibrate this adjacent plane, 

my string waiting for the tug 

of my name—Say it once, say it 

three times, fifty-seven all 

the same I arrive to hover 

under the red maple every raven 

avoids, nephews unfolding chairs 

and buzzing around carrot cake 

and whiskey, nieces who insist 

on Margaret or Abigail, 

no initials or abbreviations 

on their allotted page—

Write them out in full in blue

cursive in-laws can’t decipher—

Sling every g, swoop each l—

Only the sounds matter, hertz

so high the others and I lash like gnats

at their ears, sheets dancing

on the clothesline grandkids

use for volleyball—Pass us

through cavities, echoes

our mitochondria recognize,

our hearts a wet pump, a timer

counting up to this end—

Resurrection another folly

the priests wasted time on—

We linger a little less

than we lived, my name

one leaf shaking without wind.