The sofa in the funeral parlour
breaks away and I am a bird
forever blinking in the gloom.
At this banquet of death, I eat
the endings of my ancestors.
Their toxic genes garble my cells,
my misaligned synapses. Their ends
are keys to my beginning: brain bleeds
and disorganized hips ambling down
through generations. If you read
my cards, you’d stop believing in luck.
It’s one way to hide from the truth─
there are no good deaths in this family.
My grandfather’s naked body sent
to one wife by the other, my sister
too contagious to kiss goodbye.
Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and novels. Her most recent writing has or will appear in Flash Boulevard, 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, On the Seawall, Midway, Blue Unicorn, and the Best Microfiction 2025 anthology. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.