Brother on Brother
I. A jay landing in wire grass, the tiki hut’s floor of wet tar— prickly pears strung on a line, blurred and gummy— then, cast on my wall, the silhouette of a branch drifting; the after-air of the opening door. My skin, inescapable. Outstretched on my belly, I held onto the raised stitching of the bedspread. Waking from dream, I knew those were your hands stealing away and the laughing. II. Red lights, smeared, wobbling in a circle: they hung over me, materializing from a cloud, or a thicket: flesh, long-enfolded, was unflapped: the sour smell of moist grooves exposed. What leapt inside me when the bell’s mallet struck wetly against my palette? Who’d stop the ringing? Afterwards I’d make a plan to escape the bitter drops: I’d sleep with my face in a pillow and try to eat the fibers. I’d be immovable. III. You watched over me: sandpaper, gorge— fold fallow plow— whispered, I could kill you