Scotch Broth

His grandmother would smear ketchup
up and down her arms and bang
open the screen door and scream
out into the yard where he was playing,
saying she'd sliced her wrists.

When he kvetched about his supper,
his mother poured the entire bowl
of Scotch broth over his scalp.
Salty soup ran down his cheeks.
Tentacles of tripe got tangled in his hair.

Every year, for his daughter's birthday,
he'd hold a ribboned parcel before her.
When, after much eye-rolling, she wearily
lifted the lid, she'd find
a severed thumb inside: his own, poking up
through a hole in the bottom of the box,
and stiff for only a moment before
starting to wiggle.
 
After years of silence, he flew out to visit her.
But first, he scribbled his own name on a box 
(she'd been named after him)
and mailed it to her. It contained 
a cheap plastic clock
inside of which was a pistol
so he wouldn't have to spend the entire 
weekend unarmed.

His plane took off from Panama City and landed
without incident, leaving all passengers intact;
no severed limbs, no lacerated wrists,
no innards spilled like soup across the tarmac. 


To prepare for the visit, his daughter dug up
her grandmother's old recipes,
hid the costume jewelry. 
She stuffed the gun with bullets
and shoved it in the glove compartment
as she drove to the airport,
knowing it would be the first thing he asked for
as he staggered, drunk and smiling 
and still somehow unharmed, 
through the gate.