January 10th: Digging Tunnels With My Kid Brother
for I was on my way to a life of buying
untouched drive shafts, universal joints,
perfect bearings so steeped in Cosmoline
they could endure a century and still retain
their purity...
Philip Levine
Buying and Selling
no sandbox but the sea and a glass bottle boat
we’d float in the old sewer runoff
when the tide was out
no route for cars but dilapidated Tonka trucks
rusted and one flat tire and five hundred
feet of driveway road
no cold milk but warm just shook powder blue
thin charity he drank and drank
and I gave him mine
we held hands under the bed and shaked
away the boogeymen
in warm going cold piss pants
we watched the sea come back in
without our little boat
and i walked home alone
we drove our frontend loader off the road
and i walked home
alone
i gave him my blue milk because
he was always hungrier
than me
i watched his hand grow bigger
bthan mine and watched
fhim empty it from mine
and today if I want to prove it all
meant something still
means something
i buried a small bottle out in the garden
underneath the snow. I planted it the autumn
he took sober and got the gauze
off his wrists for good.
come spring and after a heavy rain
i’ll lift it out of the tunnel of runoff
and if I want it to
mean something more than glass
fragile as his forty year black
i’ll wait for it to ache more
than the blue milk we were both
hungry for though him always more
always more
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