Happy Birthday John by Veronica Lupinacci

Happy birthday,

Silky J, Johnathan Tiberius Sardelis The Great, Thoroughgood Longstrider, Yonnie, you would be thirty two. I told them we would really notice you’re gone when we marry people you never met and we name our kids after you. When our tattoos are cracked peeling mud scrolls. You weren’t dead when you died. You are dead now that I’ve begun graying, and you are still golden and high.

Veronica Lupinacci grew up in Sarasota, Florida. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She has taught writing from the elementary to university level. She was a finalist in the Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest 2015 and her poems have recently appeared in The McNeese Review, Haiku Journal, The Pinch, BOAAT, and Eunoia Review.