Avunculi Mortuus
Poetry by Todd Dillard and Ben Kline
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.
Todd Dillard's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Waxwing, Fairy Tale Review, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Guernica. His debut collection of poetry Ways We Vanish (Okay Donkey Press) was a finalist for the 2021 Balcones Poetry Award. He lives outside of Philadelphia with his wife, two kids, and several as-yet unsourced bumps in the night.
Ben Kline (he/him) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Author of the chapbooks SAGITTARIUS A* and DEAD UNCLES, host of POETRY AFIELD and POETRY STACKED, Ben is a poet and storyteller whose work appears in POETRY, South Carolina Review, Southeast Review, Autofocus, fourteen poems and many other publications. Learn more at https://benklineonline.wordpress.com/.
