Shock the Monkey By Jeff Weddle

I suppose the monkey was a terror,

but it never had a chance.

Maybe it was a biter or

perhaps threw its shit at people.

Still, did it deserve to be murdered?

The father took the son

on a camping trip, the only time

this ever happened,

and the monkey

was left at home,

alone with the mother.

There was an electrical outlet and a fork

and, when the father and son returned,

a dead monkey on the counter.

The mother was fine or better.

Did I mention madness ran in the family?

As far as I know,

the boy never had another pet

until he was grown

and his parents

were as dead as the monkey,

which remains, unavenged

and forgotten,

in a shoebox, two feet deep

behind the porch.

The boy lasted for another fifty years

but finally drank himself into an early grave.

The monkey, safe in heaven,

ate a banana

and bided its time,

because

even in paradise,

sin blots the soul,

and payback is delicious.

It was always going to be

hell.

 

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the Eudora Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry, including being named the first State of Alabama Beat Poet Laureate (2024-2026) by the National Beat Poetry Foundation. His work has appeared in Albanian and Spanish translation. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.