I sometimes think that I remember these things wrong.
How on the morning after my sister’s death
my father swung his baseball bat
through the car windshield
that had held her shattered body
How in the junkyard,
My brothers and I stood behind him
Watching the blood
Drain from out of his hands
And into the weapon
Extended back to us/like the embrace
Reserved only for us boys/who had broken open together.
I am 13 years old forever/as I watch my brothers
Take turns measuring the weight of the world/within their hands/
while I remain too young to kill the dead again/thus a boy unable to beat in the car
Where his sister’s body imploded/instead becomes a witness to victory/a mouth to boyish
fingers/ready to kiss back home/every movement they will ever make/as the truth of that
woman’s body/empty and endless/spills down their throats/like gasoline
Their father’s bat/a lit match in their mouths/as they dance against the summer heat/
Throats shaken alive by the grief of their Mother’s God/who will soon be crushed under boyish hands/because in this story God can be humbled/in this story/God will fold under the swing
Of a father’s baseball bat/while his boys scream their prayers/back through their chests
And weep through hands fully broken.
//////////
David
Began crying as soon as he struck the car.
The baseball bat trembling inside his fingers
Like an unspoken word.
You must have already known
That beating in her windshield
Wouldn’t raise any woman from back out the ground.
But I am thirteen years old forever
when I begin crying behind you
Tears down my cheek for the first time since her dying
Because my brother was in pain
My beautiful brother
With chaos clenched between his teeth.
His jaw, wide and trembling.
How I loved him.
How I still pray for those hands.
///////
When the glass from the car moves past us
And into our father
We will watch in the fading light
Our future rise towards us.
Brothers with broken hands
And a father’s arm wound around our chests.
The broken spine of a Volkswagen
falling down our throats
and echoing through whatever is left
of summer.
Ian Powell-Palm is a writer, poet, and musician currently living in Belgrade, Montana. His work attempts to interrogate familial trauma, sexual identity, and the resurrection of the dead. You can read more of his poetry on Facebook at "Powell-Palm Poetry".