A Posthumous Secrecy Poem by MARINA GIPPS

The lost poet ancestor
was well hidden on our family tree.
While others guessed death by chocolate,
we pretended it was war.

That poor fat James,
after much soul searching,
arrived toting an AK-47,
on a noisy John Deere,
insisting his soupy skull
was target practice
for years of banging it
against a cheap barn wall;
All of his poems, merely mantra
for his dance with immortality.

Feeling our shared blood,
I awoke, congealed in the short air
of a winter evening when words
of smoke hurt the lungs, I felt...

Far more than a namesake
and well, about the secrecy...
with some things left unsaid,
you have the right to remain silent
in the afterlife.