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Elegy for a Miscarried Brother

Out of heat loss and emptiness
I am constructing a sculpture

in the front yard. I am five.

I have taken the Flinstones play car
and filled it with soil. I am planting

pinecones there
and golden globs of banana.

Years later,

I will compare myself to you in the supermarket
when I am buying bananas
and everyone will smile nervously.

I will use everything you owned
because there will be nothing else.

There will be newspaper.

I am the void fitting itself with pajamas.
I am tricked-out. I am gorging on you.

You tell me in a dream how I could cut loose
from gravity

easy as a balloon.

You can hear me singing.
That is how you know I am mid-flight.
 
Posted 01/08/10
For my friend Joshua Gottlieb-Miller.
"Elegy for a Miscarried Brother" was first published in SUB-LIT (vol. 2, no. 3).
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