Annette Covrigaru - A Poem
I am only my brother’s brother in the mirror
when the boxer waistband squeezes, flesh
spooling, hips hugging in a queer embrace,
and when we embrace our wounds are
symphonies that beat so wild we beat our-
selves. There are imprints of what-ifs on your
throat, a softball to the larynx and the near death of
your voice, oh how I hang on those vibrations, a
discography of Adam Sandler movie quotes,
Outkast’s “Idlewood Blue (Don’tchu Worry
‘Bout Me),” iridescent laughter, sound reasoning.
Three days before top surgery you ask that I
suffocate a little longer, text a tautology of fore-
warnings;
very young life
changing. can’t reverse
If you
waited the future
new surgery will get
better over time
I marvel at us boys and all the eulogies
we’ve recited for our selves, how we borrow
each other’s lines without even knowing.
On a flight home to New York from visiting
Dad, with nobody in the middle seat, we share
vacant memories from our Y2K adolescence,
the void of then and now, and only then do I see
a reflection. After my surgery, waking from an
anesthetic smog, I ask for you, your hand.
And then, my brother, you say I understand.