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Second Cousins by Ben Kline

September 19, 2023
Reading Time: 1 Minutes

I watched two drown in their preacher’s grip.
Have you ever heard someone gasp back
to life? Like gargling a scream. But Jesus

crushed the snake’s head, their preacher said.
He believed in what he couldn’t see or hear.
He held me down and repeated my first name.

I held down dioxides and a blue racer interrupted
the ripples, splitting sawgrass, zippers, cheap
cigarettes by the quarry. My quick shimmy

a fake rattle. Danger only wants to be believed.
I only returned to skinny dip and peekaboo.
To see what I hadn’t seen, even if it looked like

what I had. Everyone watching from the shore
had my last name, knew the same dead too.

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Kline, Ben
Hailing from the farmland valleys of west Appalachia, Ben Kline (he/him/his) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Author of Sagittarius A*, Dead Uncles, and the forthcoming It Was Never Supposed to Be, Ben is a storyteller, poet and Madonna megafan. His work appears in Florida Review, DIAGRAM, Copper Nickel, Bellingham Review, Gordon Square Review, HAD, POETRY, South Carolina Review and many other publications. Learn more about his work at https://benklineonline.wordpress.com/.

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