by Jamilla VanDyke-Bailey
his name was andrew and he was everything my father wasn’t. tall. angular. dull auburn skin with hands that build. uncle andrew of drive-by drop-bys to fix up my father’s house for an underhanded price.
now i only know him sick from a disease that eats. his skin now stretched tight across bones. his spine bending back, shoulder blades leaning to a curve. everything suspended but not broken. my uncle, the carpenter.
hard to see what happened to a back that burned black under the sun when he’d take every odd job to put money on the table. a back that stretched under the weight of lumber and sheetrock and a family. making high ceilings out of fifty dollars and an understanding.
i don’t understand. he wasn’t an evil man. he might’ve fallen short but he’d been motherless since ten and fatherless since thirty and a stepmothers love couldn’t be the same. he might’ve cursed or scammed, but never sinned enough to warrant this. not when he could foster beauty from some tools and his own bare hands.
she said they took out all his teeth trying to find answers in the back of his mouth, but he kept getting worse. and by the time they caught the disease they taught him about time and the word terminal.
i heard once that the Cold has no eyelids or pupils, but once it sees you, it will make what it wants of your shoulders and your spine and your self. like my uncle who used to measure once and cut once until his hands started to press themselves shut on their own.
i wonder if he got used to the sick, the Cold, the eating. it’s lived with him so long that they’ve had to become familiar with one another. turning them into copies and clones and shadows of each other, the disease making him smaller and unlike himself. unlike my uncle, the man who made and made and made only to become unmade. unscrewed, unfastened, stripped of wood grain, down to the real matter. down to the nuts and bolts and splinters and endless possibilities he’s leaving behind.
Midnight Cemetery Day
by Ferris Jones
Jamilla VanDyke-Bailey (@alli.maj) is a pro-black feminist poet and essayist. Her poetry chapbook, than we have been (Weasel Press, 2022), and her full-length book of poetry, the womxn (Finishing Line Press, 2023), are currently available for purchase.
Ferris E. Jones is an award-winning, internationally published poet, artist, and screenwriter living in Manchester, Connecticut. His art has been seen in Gulf Stream magazine, and his poetry has appeared in both print and online magazines, including as the featured poet for Creative Talents Unleashed. Ferris has twice received honorable mention awards from the Writer’s Digest annual screenwriting contest.
Ignatian Literary Magazine 