Benjamin Niespodziany

UNCLE TIME

1.

My uncle has died. We do not know why. We know not who to ask. He will not tell us. We tap our shadows and close our homes.

2.

When my uncle died, all of his guns were split between his three brothers. All older. All serious men. They keep them in safes, away from state birds.

3.

My sister swims laps in our glass pool. I’m in my bed reliving my first seizure. I’m shaking down the stairs. I’m pushed onto a white sheet and told to keep quiet. I’m pushed through a tunnel and told to not talk. “What if I shake?” I ask. “This is not the time to shake,” they say, but I shake some more. They hook my brain to discarded tools. My sister lends me her blankets and her bags. I gather them like dolls.

4.

My uncle is dead and we are not sprinklers when others are around. In the evening, we speak of rosebuds, ones that grow from worms. In hiding we lie and cry our nightly routines.

5.

My cousin is my uncle’s only orphan son. My cousin is a chef, discarding his every attempt. “The favor's not good enough,” he says, “never good enough, not even close.” His apron is faded. Instead of KISS THE COOK, it reads _IS_ _HE _ _OK. “Not good enough,” he says, “not good enough. Not like dad’s.” The moon does not reply to his late-night sobs and we deny our ever doing the same.

6.

My grandfather would have offered to help solve the mystery of the grandfather clock but my grandfather too was dead.

7.

My grandfather is inside the grandfather clock where my uncle once lived. The grandfather clock my grandfather is in is a grandfather clock that does not work. My grandfather can’t fix the grandfather clock, so he nails together his fingers. To shake his hand is to pinch the grip. The blood becomes oil. The dark becomes dry.

8.

Our slope of despair is hopeful. Everyone tries to touch my uncle’s chandelier as we count his clocks that do not work. The sky above becomes but a note on the page of time.

BENJAMIN NIESPODZIANY is a Chicago-based writer whose work appears in the Wigleaf Top 50, Booth, Conduit, Indiana Review, Puerto del Sol, and Sixth Finch. His debut poetry collection is No Farther than the End of the Street (Okay Donkey, 2022), and his new novella of connected stage plays is Cardboard Clouds (X-R-A-Y, 2023).