The mouth of a father disappears
into the mouth of a son, and that day
my own mouth disappeared into my brother’s.
All those prayers and lambs he bore up
for all of creation, all of his jaw,
unhinged in my palm as my father
found us in the yard. I waited for him
to take my hands, or for halos of bees
to swarm a snake up into a dragon,
a deity to blind me as I blinded him,
something to clinch down on me,
someone righteous to pack my throat
with ire and salt for when I don’t remember
later, for when my brother pretends not to:
me holding a boy that isn’t mine,
me learning to hold a boy
like a man shouldering his kill back
from the field for the cleaning.
Blaike Marshall, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, has a degree in English from the College of Charleston. His work was selected for the 2015 Adroit Prize for Poetry: Editor’s List, Best Undergraduate Writing of 2017 in Plain China, the Mount Pleasant Sidewalk Poetry Contest, and also has appeared in Poetry Quarterly.
