Carmen Giménez Smith

My brother


My brother _is__ a savior
who can torpedo
through privilege with an artistic stun gun
he’s a tempest saturating the city

He makes a scar
in the earth_ draws out
an admixture of folklore
and animus_ plus
a pinch of_ worry from our
adolescent miseries
so he can build_ endless
self-perpetuation_ literally
with big red bricks

This he does with
our so-called inheritance

We once walked
on our father’s periphery
looking in like_ the matchstick
children

We walked the edge of our houses
to find ___a warm window
Was it there
It wasn’t

the self-preservation__ that hunger
and fear __made of me
a bewitching hybrid of
broken coat trees and orbital
chair and door_ king_ choir
maybe _____that _elemental
cultivation
of fading into____ the wallpaper
We’re still looking
plush with hunger

My brother speaks
the cloud’s patois
a clatter ___calm ___medium        loosens
a grip wears
on the surface____ of his planet
I said anything
I walked far away
I left my brother behind

More tenderness
might have made us_____ better
failure without the sting

we might have found
magic and known
its transport

the instability was the brutal
______grief of one tornado