carries
a blanket of gauze like heated skin – all albino. In this city of
many colors my uncle cries out in my sleep. He is dying & knows it.
He
limps forward to speak & is interrupted by his nephew Bernard who
rocks him in his arms & coos a blessing in a voice I’ve never
known.
There’s a festival beginning. It’s for the sleepers who have
awakened & the embittered who have reluctantly returned to meditate.
He who won’t eat thorns must build a fire of dried dung –
heat & stir the pot. She who cooks dead flesh is taken, with a blade,
to slit a young throat.
Those who won’t take the hand of a cripple are compelled to &
dive with sharks – steal a bait-fish to scale.
When the table is set, someone (I can’t see) chants in a foreign
tongue the prayer for peace in the afterlife.
In the end, my uncle dies & a stone is laid in the ground & smaller
stones are gathered – a new room is begun.
