Is Death anything like thin soup?
Does he play the violin?
Is he the one who’s been hiding
all our firewood? Is that who snuck
in and helped himself to our last potato?
I think it must have been Death
that time in the henhouse, but next time,
he will be more prepared and wear dress slacks.
Does he prefer mountains to beaches?
Or crimson to black? Will he give me time
to finish hanging the clothes on the line?
Will he remember to write my mother?
Shannon Kelly lives in Galway, Ireland. Her work has been published in Crannog, BODY Prague, and the Irish Times, and she was the 2016 winner of the Allingham Festival Poetry Competition.