Uncle Larry
John Carr
Uncle Larry is cool.
I’m eight years old, and he’s living with us Ð when I come home from school
he’s on the fuzzy couch,
the one that’s sorta orange or brown with the flowers or suns (I’m not really sure what they are),
in his Marlboro t-shirt (it’s a big word but I know it).
He’s skinny, like the Scarecrow in my picture book.
“Johnny, kamere, watch some MTV wit me,” he says
smiling (no one else calls me Johnny),
his curly red beard makes him look like Doctor Teeth from the Muppet Show,
but instead of big and white
his teeth look like my yellow sidewalk chalk.
I sit down next to him, “How was school?”
I tell him it was fun, we’re reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“Good shit,” he says, smiling again, this time looking like a bug
with his big glasses.
There’s a video on, and it remind me of Star Wars,
so I say so.
“It’s The Cars,” he says.
He’s still smiling, and so am I,
but as he stretches I notice he must have fallen
or hit the stove or something
because he has boo-boos on the inside of his arms.
Then I notice there’s these blackish bumpy lines
growing out from the boo-boos, they kinda look like
lightning or spider-webs or something.
I’ve never seen any one with lightning on their
arms before Ð
Uncle Larry is cool.
It’s a thought that I’ll recall
at thirteen, standing in Saint Frances DeSales, choking on the incense congested air,
dying for a hit off my inhaler.
My vestments itch. I’m boiling alive as I stand before the mourning,
midnight-clad
moments of his life.
Father John whispers to me that it’s okay
for me to go stand with my parents and my brother now.
I join them, together we step up, he’s lying there
in a suit he never would have worn,
he’s clean shaven and his face is stern.
Still the Scarecrow, though.
I reach out, touch his hand,
to find that
Uncle Larry
is
cool.
