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I am the oldest son.
I am the second son.
They won’t call me their son.

Make me into your monster,
as if I have a choice.
I carry that with pride.

They say I killed their daughter.
She bled out in the living room.
Her blood is on my hands.

I held her dying hand.
I witnessed her last breath.
She wouldn’t save herself.

Her heart beats in my chest,
a phantom of my own
thanks me with every beat.

It is the monster’s heart
that has kept me alive.
I won’t apologize.

Late-nineties darkness
You were bent over
Some september shore
Like a construction crane
Beneath a pimpish fur coat—
A womans, surely
White, draped lavishly, comically
Down to the pine-burl knees
I remember you hunched forward
False scowl, as an old man plays
Into his many odd jokes
In one hard hand:
A glistening muskie, most of your height
Beneath you both, wet grass
Around you both, total blackness
I love that picture, almost as much
As I would have loved you
Thank you
For my middle name

Nighttime falls, I hear distant cries,
Memories of your precious life,
How I loved your midnight calls,
We danced in the moonlight to my chest.
Held tight.

You struggled to get into this world,
But you made it out in your own time,
Only to be taken too soon, eleven months later,
By a silent perpetrator.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,
the taker of your breath as you slept.
Time to wake but not a peep,
I sensed your absence when my eyes first opened.
I picked you up but no longer were you there,
I wanted to close my eyes and find you,
How would I ever live without you?

You were taken away far too early,
Our future is stolen from us,
but death could not erase our past-
I refuse to give it the time we shared.
So, I lay down this sackcloth suit,
And I will spend the rest of my life.
Celebrating you.

Part of me will always be
Left in my car from that night
It ran so long that it was morning
We could’ve talked for another twenty four
And not ran out of things to discuss
Never before had I felt a connection like this
This or that, I guess may be more correct
The stick of gum ran out of flavor
Less than an hour into us
I didn’t mind though
You preoccupied my subconscious
No one can ever sit passenger
And not remind me of you
Burned into the seat like scar tissue

You make me think.
What kind of person
people are when
they’re not alive-
in the body,
when blood evaporates
and eyes can’t substitute a mouth’s smile.

I can’t make any
interpretations of you,
and it’s pretty upsetting.
I’d like to stare into
your eyes
and spend at least one
thanksgiving dinner with you.

I’d like to read Bible passages
with you, as you teach me.
The same teachings you
taught my older brother, Jacob.
The ones that made him weep
as a man.

Did you weep?
Did you lose your oxygen to where you had to yawn in stress?
Did I inherit that from you?
Did you kill a person when you were alive?
Ever shot a gun?
Did you ever cheat? On a test, on your wife, gambling, in death?
What was your favorite word?
What was your favorite type of cloud?

Who were you
that made family stories so memorable.
You sound so noble
and wholesome. A memory with
loss.
Who were you that makes
me believe that I’d like you.
I don’t even like my
parents, but you raised
one of them.
A grandpa, a friend.
A person I’ve never met and will never know.

Nevertheless, a person I love.
With no meeting
besides a hospital visit
and a funeral arrangement,
you’ve changed my life.
In death.

You’ve done more for me
than anyone who’s living ever has,
while never crossing the border
of eternity
to
get to me.

You’ve done more for me
than my last name
will ever provide for me.
So, I’ll ring the Army Bell
you left hanging on the wall
in your home. The house grandma
survives in.

I ring it till my ears
run in red.
My cardiovascular system feeling stuck
like yours did.
My grandpa- a commander of the living
and commanded by God.
To come back to him
earlier than us humans
wanted him to.

He never rang the bell
on Earth. Jimmy was humble enough.
But I always hope that
he got to ring a bell in Heaven.
Humble to meet the Lord our God.
With the same direction he projected
when others were called.

He was called and he’s helping to call.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

Death came for Life,
but when it saw how beautifully Life flowed,
it stopped in its tracks.

Death became obsessed, a silent admirer,
while Life never noticed its presence.
Life just lived, loved, experienced.
Life held no fear,
Life simply was.

Death envied Life’s delusions,
for Death was bound by certainties,
while Life wandered free,
lost in illusions.

One day, Life felt Death’s breath
and trembled in fear.
But as Death drew near,
Life surrendered,
let Death in,
and held its memories close.

Death fell in love with Life,
and Life embraced Death.
Together, they created beauty and meaning.

Death was not to be feared,
and Life was meant to be celebrated.
Without Life, Death did not wound.
Without Death, Life had no purpose.

In one brief moment,
they coexisted—
embracing for the first and last time,
when Death collided with Life,
and Life felt fine

The shadowbird flies highest on the moonless nights (and there are seeds in my palms)
It gives the appearance of a passing cloud, as there are stars no more (but I am my own land)
Who could have predicted its fragile wings? (devastation came)
The bird is a contradiction (I was not ready)
Hollow bones (I was not ready)
Sharp beak (I am not ready)
Dark eyes (I am not ready)
Fearful (I am not ready)
and (I am not ready)
Pleading (Please)
Does it need to be held? (Please)
Or killed? (Please)
A danger (It cannot be real)
A friend (Deep breaths)
A living being (Not again. Not anymore)
This grief can fly (That one cursed phone call)
But it won’t. ()

She was caught with a gun in her hand.
The guy had bled out in the sand.
“It’s not me,” she exclaimed.
It’s another she blamed.
“The Beach Butler has done it again.”

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose pump failed – with an ice pick she’d stuck it.
She’d snuck up in disguise . . .
But the biggest surprise?
A clean limerick – now you can go suck it.

’Twas a dark stormy night in Sin City.
At the end of the bar, she looked pretty.
Her gat did him in
Ere he’d finished his gin.
His tab was paid up, more’s the pity.

She said it hurts to smile,
Enamel weaker than her spine,
Having been stepped on
As she slept on
Park bench after park bench
With sparkling new segregated silver lines
That politicians melted down from her very own rain clouds.

She told me misery is heavy, like the air of a storm, and it
Shrouds
That her hoodie bears the brunt of
Blunt force trauma,
Covers her blunt, force, and trauma.

But she said,
“Drawstrings look like
A noose in the dark,
The same way a candy bar
Looks like a gun.”
She doesn’t carry either.

“To be honest,
The president must still envy my spine.
Even if it’s broken,
It’s mine—
To remove
And crack like a whip
Or tie around my neck.
Same difference in the end.
Fragile things
That last till after death,
Eroding with each sip of lemonade from the lemons they gave.”
Still, she smiles.

So many times the body is found
because water tumbles over stairs,
along furtive hallways, across creaking
thresholds to slide headlong down the slope
of the driveway and onto the blacktop
street where it tidies itself into a message
people wade through wade through wade
through on their way to work church school
the market, hoping to ignore the insidious
damp soaking their sneakers, seeping into
their socks, squishing between their toes
beckoning them to follow the swirling
rush that started as a trickle, that started
as a slap of an argument, grew into rage
with hands teeth broken glass until
a stranger sister friend can’t help but
flex their feet in the sog of shoes, slosh
up the driveway, over the threshold,
undeterred by the small flood eddying
down the hall to shoulder past resistance
and pressure on the bathroom door and
discover her, still afloat in the spit and spill of
no more never again you made me do it
while her limp hands and hair rise
at water’s command and the spout runs
like a mouth without mercy filling her lungs,
bloating her cells until the spigot is switched off
and the water drains, leaving us crying
drowning really in the message
that we are always always too late.