March 3, 2025To My Brother
Brother is such a close word,
a rabbit word, a ghost word,
a throat word, a word of blood
& root & cell & stem shot
through concrete, an agree word,
a word belonging to toad
& gnat alike, a dog word,
a mitochondrial word,
a rivering outdoor word,
a toehold near the summit.
Daeman, I feel like I’m always
arbitraging with the past
& the future, each poem whorled
with the fingerprints smudging
a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie
card in a cigar box from
grandpa’s house & holding out
the halogen light of some
final hospital room I
hopefully won’t find myself
in before my last breath pines
across the waters into
a purple the shade of mom’s
dresses when we lived in the
army green apartment house
in Schenectady, our bunk-
bed a rowboat we steered each
night as mom & dad fought or
made love in the next room. I
wish I could remember what
we talked about all those nights
before fading off into
chiaroscuro slumbers,
the aquatics of sleep usurping
our separate common futures.
What illusory brindled
beast writhes there in the shadows?
I want to think we discussed
the shades of perennials
in grandmother’s flowerbeds,
but I’m sure our talk was more
delinquent & innocent,
imbued with the nightlights of
baseball diamonds & the smell
of fresh cut grass caroming
through chain link fences from park
to lawn to side street to ave.
& back through the bitter cul-
de-sacs of the suburban
dark, back to me dreaming you
into a poem where you are
holding your newborn daughter
in a photograph with big
mountains looming behind you,
into your niece & nephew
pretending you live in our
attic, as they shout “Uncle
Daeman” at the ceiling fan
& I repeat the refrain:
brother is such a far word,
an orbital word, a train
of stars from the hem of night,
a word that wrestles other
words to the ground in front of
a Denny’s at 2 a.m.
from #86 – Winter 2024