it to us
in paper cones.
We’ll be coming home soon, Grandma
each of us promises.
We love you.
And when she says,
I love you, too
the South is so heavy in her mouth
my eyes fill up with the missing of
everything and everyone
I’ve ever known.
the paint eater
In the night in the corner of the bedroom
the four of us share,
comes a pick, pick, picking of plaster
paint gone come morning.
My younger brother, Roman,
can’t explain why paint melting
on his tongue feels good.
Still, he eats the paint
and plaster until a white hole
grows where pale green paint used to be.
And too late we catch him,
his fingers in his mouth,
his lips covered with dust.
chemistry
When Hope speaks, it’s always about comic books
and superheroes
until my mother tells him he has to talk
about something else.
And then it’s science. He wants to know
everything
about rockets and medicine and the galaxy.
He wants to know where the sky ends and how,
what does it feel like when gravity’s gone
and what is the food men eat
on the moon. His questions come so fast
and so often that we forget how quiet
he once was until my mother
buys him a chemistry set.
And then for hours after school each day
he makes potions, mixing chemicals that stink up
the house, causing sparks to fly
from shaved bits of iron,
puffs of smoke to pop from strange-colored liquids.
We are fascinated by him, goggled and bent
over the stove
a clamped test tube protruding
from his gloved hand.
On the days when our mother says
she doesn’t want him smelling up the house
with his potions, he takes his trains apart, studies
each tiny piece, then slowly puts them together again.
We don’t know what it is he’s looking for
as he searches the insides of things, studies
the way things change. Each whispered
Wow
from him makes me think that he
with his searching—and Dell with her reading
and even Roman with his trying to eat
to the other side of our walls—is looking
for something. Something way past Brooklyn.
Something
out
there.
baby in the house
And then one day, Roman won’t get up,
sun coming in bright
through the bedroom window, the rest of us
dressed and ready to go outside.
No laughter—just tears when we hold him.
More crying when we put him down.
Won’t eat and even my mother
can’t help him.
When she takes him to the hospital, she comes back
alone.
And for many days after that, there is no baby
in our house and I am finally
the baby girl again, wishing
I wasn’t. Wishing there wasn’t so much quiet
where my brother’s laugh used to be, wishing
the true baby in our house
was home.
going home again
July comes and Robert takes us on the night train
back to South Carolina. We kiss
our baby brother good-bye in his hospital bed where
he reaches out, cries to come with us.
His words are weak as water, no more
than a whisper with so much air around them.
I’m coming too,
he says.
But he isn’t coming.
Not this time.
My mother says there is lead in his blood
from the paint he finds a way to pick
and eat off our bedroom wall
every time our backs are turned.
Small holes grow, like white stars against
the green paint, covered again and again
by our mother. But still, he finds a way.
Each of us hugs him, promises
to bring him candy and toys.
Promises we won’t have fun down south
without him.
Each of us leans in
for our mother’s kiss on our forehead,
her warm lips, already a memory
that each of us carries home.
home again to hall street
My grandmother’s kitchen is the same
big and yellow and smelling of the pound cake
she’s made to welcome us back.
And now in the late afternoon, she is standing
at the sink, tearing collards beneath
cool running water, while the crows caw outside,
and the sun sinks slow into red and gold
When Hope lets the screen door slam,
she fusses,
Boy, don’t you slam my door again!
and my brother says,
I’m sorry.
Just like always.
Soon,
Alexandra Amor
The Duke Next Door
John Wilcox
Clarence Major
David Perlmutter M. D., Alberto Villoldo Ph.d.
Susan Wiggs
Vicki Myron
Mack Maloney
Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett
Unknown