‘When a Man Knows Much More than We Ever Did’ by Kelli Allen

Seamus carries his stories in a blood clot. Each afternoon he blesses the cockroach beneath his window and the sparrow hawk just beyond. He is not the last of the grandchildren to recite limericks before sleeping, but he was a young man when snows first covered the steeple on King Street. The sight of metal stained white arrested his steps then and keeps his pace circular now. Seamus marries a woman drawing every Saturday’s bath, and he gives her bouquet to the radio altar, knobs turned to his left, antenna soldier straight. He writes his brides’ names in sugar and when the ants come, they bring titles and history before spiralling back down mounds under an oak. There is a worn-out donkey grazing thistle, dreaming all day of his lamb-hide saddle and an obscured blue mountain pass. Seamus knows where the ostrich bone brush is, but he is too tired to tend a beast of such burden, even when four knees bend and wait all morning.

Speaking just one word means the throat Seamus no longer trusts will stammer a cough for hours. The end is coming for him, but Seamus is wrong about when. He is concerned for stubbornness in the Gospels and there is no way to save the pages from his stove. There is no alchemical recipe for turning jokers into queens, and the cards too, then, are food for dinner flames. The night he dies will be soon, but there is twine still to tie notes meant for the messenger of beets and milk.