Peter Johnson

Wake

A casket that couldn't care less. The corpse. My father hanging from a branch of our family tree. Aunt Katherine digesting a purple fingernail, her over-the-hill orgasm just in sight. Not to mention my pugnacious cousin kissing everyone's wife. Even the floral arrangements look forlorn, even the overflowing breasts of my cousin's girlfriend whom I would have loved if not for her glass eye. "Stay near me, do not take flight," I whisper. But she lines up with the rest, groveling for a ride in my rich uncle's Mercedes. I hang back, content to hear its heavy black doors opening and closing