Ian Hall 

 

My cousin was something of a dilettante
of madness. Skullduggery, onanism, shooting 

his surname into the quaintness
of a chapel wall—he was always flirting 

with crazy. More than once, I saw him cop a feel
of the livid  

wirework of an electric fence
without flinch. Saw him egg  

young holler boys into tasting the spitting
image of whipped cream—hen  

diarrhea. & with firecrackers, I saw him
turn a bullfrog into gothic  

rain. Adolescing with him
made Jack Link’s

out of my nerves. In late teenhood, he took work
muling pills from South Florida to London, 

Kentucky. Tooling between states in a Buick
with Bad Hombre plates, he coined himself the famous 

wraith of Route 75. He did it until he had the folding
money not to. After eight months of that 

desperado stuff, he came home. But directly
he blissed his makings away, spent the rest 

of the year in a grinning
dopefog. Then on, he just wheedled by 

on the sturdy
samaritanship of his kin. Every so often

though, to cut through the narcotic
dinge, he’d try his hand at something new. Dumping coal 

slurry in the incoordinate dark, digging
grave after grave

just for the cold drinks, & putting pneumatic
divots in a calf’s skull

on the kill line. He worked some as a farrier
just to make sure the mares were clipped 

to the quick, left limping
along on petals 

of abscessed tendon. He ruined many
a fine-blooded gait. Finally, they put him away  

for leaving three trailers
half-arsoned. A fire marshal asked him what  

happened & he said I don’t know, maybe the insurance
wire got too hot, winked. That was over a decade ago. The other 

morning, I was on my way somewhere & saw two boys playing
with a downed power line  

& I thought of him. His phlegmy heart. 
Somebody local  

told me that he’d taken up
a Pentecostal ministry. That he was preaching  

to a rabid 200 every Sunday. Word is, he said he had to
forswear us every one. Anymore, he couldn’t condone  

our wrongdoings. I can just see him
up at the pulpit, wringing the hell  

out of that holy alphabet. & I can see the gleeful
ick in his eyes when it’s time to baptize  

the penitents. How he loves getting to hold them
underwater, slobbers for those few seconds  

between drowning
& deliverance.