Uncle Ink

February 6, 2009

Leave it to NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac to put me in such a great mood at the end of a long  week (but productive–wrote fifteen more pages; am now into the 3rd chapter of my novel).

Love this poem by Peter Meinke, so funny and strange. We all have a kooky uncle. Mine is my Uncle Linc, who worked for the phone company, had a voice that sounded like he was gargling gravel, and drank beer like it was going out of style. For years I thought his name was Uncle Ink.

Uncle Jim

What the children remember about Uncle Jim is that on the train to Reno to get divorced so he could marry again he met another woman and woke up in California.

It took him seven years to untangle that dream but a man who could sing like Uncle Jim was bound to get in scrapes now and then:

he expected it and we expected it.

Mother said, It’s because he was the middle child, and Father said, Yeah, where there’s trouble Jim’s in the middle.

When he lost his voice he lost all of it to the surgeon’s knife and refused the voice box they wanted to insert. In fact he refused almost everything. Look, they said, it’s up to you. How many years do you want to live? and Uncle Jim held up one finger.

The middle one.

“Uncle Jim” by Peter Meinke, from Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems. (c) University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. Reprinted with permission.