By Megan Feringa
I ate a piece of toffee the other day,
heart-shaped and filled with caramel,
and found a fly at its center, sitting
satisfied in its own craving for sugar’s
sweet embrace, like my uncle
stiffened from a heart attack.
I was eight. He was embedded in hookers,
Marvin Gaye still spinning
on the turntable and six cigarettes
burning at the bedside,
smoking in swirls, sweet like stale cherries,
their stems twisting the knots around
his neck. The medics
hastened in to see the man who
placed himself in heaven’s hands
and they announced him a lucky
bastard to have snatched Death by
the balls and yanked like a twelve-year-old
with his first Playboy. The priest sang
the following day of Jesus’s sacrifice,
his rising from the tomb, back
to life, back to earth, and my father
scoffed: “That man’s a fool.”
And we knew my uncle wasn’t that.
Arms deep in the breasts of lotus-
eaters, an Olympian’s grin
smeared on his lips like steak fat,
we knew my Uncle Benny cheated
Death; met him at the gate swathed
in old cotton-silk and gilded in prostitute
kisses. Leaning on the picket post,
smiling like a fat carny at a cotton
candy kiosk, a cigarette fixed
between the bridges of his knuckles,
he stuck his hand in and stole
the last word from Death’s gaping
mouth: “Been fixin’ to leave
for a while now. Just waitin’
on you, you ol’ ball and chain.”
He took one last gulp of life
and croaked like a fat toad
in a field of flies,
and Death stood on Earth,
just as jealous as us.
Megan Feringa is a junior at Auburn University who enjoys hiking and yoga. She is majoring in Journalism.
