Between One Moment and the Next

in my own little hometown of War, West Virginia? Well, honey, honor and Glory are on their way. Artist. That is what I am exactlybeginning to believe that I am about becoming. Between One Moment and the Next Death puts on the hat that makes it visible, walks through my darling rooms, small as closets, where myrrh and frankincense idle like cars, my empire of clothes being cleaned and pressed for trips abroad or to the wilds of Canada. Death washes the dishes, entering the sink each time the drain sucks up the dirty water. I dry, breaking cups that are already without a handle. We dance, my antique lamp's foxfire glow stuffs our conga line with silver, my relatives white patches on the floor and ceiling. I fold up the bed in the love-making room, death winds up the clock, ticking off on its oiled hinge the details of my last day forever, each item accrues like a kind of music I surrender to as the stars do when the wind skims them off the inky cap of a pond. Death sits down in the parlor in my Louis Quatorze chair, serving up the cold green fingers of the sea on Sevres porcelain, each continent shrunk like my heart to the head of a pin where ineluctable angels strut. —Llewellyn McKellan 57 ...