ii

The second was Armenian.
He built bridges of despair,
worried over beach erosion,
timed how quickly his mother
could scoop up table crumbs before
they reached the floor.
In the many roomed house
they called each other on the phone
to say goodnight. At one time
goldfish were found frozen in their tank.
He rearranged the spice jars in alphabetical
order and constructed steps with great precision
in contrast to the gentle garden path
where she sat for years near death
next to the small body of an unmaned child.

iii

The third one was an orthodox Jew.
The beginning music listened to was shofar sweet.
His mama’s dumpling and his father’s grief,
he was not the doctor of his brother’s world.
He was more a Hitler of the Heart, a rhythm guitarist
with a Ram Das beat, a stalker and destroyer of his own dreams
and hers as well. His tenure, following a period of grace,
was a reign of poisoned words and blows administered
as love songs written sharply, used as knives.
Bleeding, she danced with wounded feet to the edge of her world and fell,
and fell, and falling found that flying wasn’t always toward the sky.

iv

There were others in the line, holding cards in their gloved hands.
(She now knew men killed what they could not own or share or be.)
A proposal in the meadow of the mill house before he died,
a banker’s contract offer. The sculptor claimed all
faces would have her eyes. The broker with his infommercial
pitched companionship for his transglobal trips of egoistic flight.
A deep eyed Greek begged understanding for a prison term
promising to keep her safe from harm An architect built models
of empty homes that they would never know.

v

On most days, it is easy to be reasonable.
Blood pumps without complaint, viscera remain intact,
meals slide in alimentary splendor right by the heart.
Cell by cell the body, industrious, pursues a pointed task: to live.
But on this day, my brother, a deep eyed boy,
pulsed to the metronome of nodding poppies in a Turkish field.
He was found strewn, like a broken flower, upon a stranger’s green tiled floor.

I remembered Maudie Greene and how we found her, years ago, lying on her back,
all sixty pounds of ancient bones and mini skirt hiked way above her brittle knees,
her tiny ass still planted in a yellow vinyl chair, toppled mid-meal into silence.
The radio cried help for three days before we broke the window to quell its screams.
We waked her in the stairwell, all eyes on Maudie, sprawled.
The next day, tossed to the street, her common things, little gogo boots akimbo.
I kept a metal cabinet, my children call it Maudie’s, it was the best that I could do.

These bags, the ones they gave me from my brother, are too heavy, smoldering.
I’m embarrassed. I wasn’t ready for them, can’t explain them to you.
“Count the contents,”I was told, “before you leave.” I longed for help.
The jeans were ravaged, puzzle ring undone, the belt too soft and thin.
The boots, I swear, were warm, had swallowed unmatched socks.
A filthy shirt, unfisted, it’s chest agape, is silent, round, disconsolate as a bald eye.

I am inhabited by a cry and ask you, please, to help me carry the bags,
by reading these words, so that something in all of us will continue to breathe.
My bones are showing, seasoned to dry wood, my heart burns and threatens to illuminate
the long shadow of night that stretches beneath the too long fingers of the day.
I am a humped-man shape, scrabbling through paper bags, a scavenger of small scraps
and bits of lives that blind us in their light, shackled by the indolence of memory.