my uncle

My uncle
kept house
in the fashion of a serial killer

Rooms full
of valves
in boxes like excised organs

A monkey
puzzle tree
casting shadows on the half landing

soldering irons
laid out
like spoons

After my grandmother
died
I went from room to room searching
for just one
body
but never uncovered anything much beyond
those valves

a partially eaten
lunch
in a speaker cabinet

A newspaper:

The local
hoodlums
tooled up under Young Bundy
mob handed with hatchets, knives
boys
as old as twenty
as young as twelve

A murder

My uncle
wanted
none of it, he dressed like a Ted

sunglasses, hipster goatee

A loner
in all ways
aloof and hunched behind the wheel of his van

A Ford, of course,
reliable
unremarkable as bread