The Night Before My PiP Tribunal I See My Dead

By Karl Knights

You left a note.

‘Please don’t judge me

too harshly.’ I read it

at your memorial.

I hate that my voice

didn’t shake.

Your mum worried

she’d broken your knees

when she cut you down.

At the inquest

the embalmer said

it was obvious

you died in agony.

When your sister heard that

she went straight to the bar.

Three years’ sobriety gone.

At your funeral it was just me,

your gran, the hired pallbearers

and the priest, who kept

thumbing his gown.

Bailiffs found your body.

Your cat was screaming,

they said. You were so thin.

They slid bags of sand

into your casket

so we could feel the weight

on our shoulders.

You would have

liked the crowd,

the thick procession

of callipers, canes, crutches.

The relatives always asked me

to speak. I was the writer,

I’d know what to say.

So many of my dead. After

twenty-seven funerals, I stopped

counting. At the last one

I held myself up

at the pulpit,

got through the usual words.

Faces like tea-bags

left out to dry looked back

at me. Sitting outside the church

we talked about your favourite

party trick, opening beer bottles

with your wheel spokes.

Copyright Credit: Karl Knights, "The Night Before My PiP Tribunal I See My Dead" from Kin. Copyright © 2022 by Karl Knights. Reprinted by permission of The Poetry Business.

Source: Kin (The Poetry Business)