become a mouth. Broad and black-throated,

it devours the skyline and every reflection.

Horns sprout from the head of my silhouette

rippling dark, dark, dark against the haze of water

and I try to squint that monster

into the shape of a man.

On Gentleness

On Gentleness

Tell me I once came close. That your body wasn’t

an obelisk and mine, so much wire wound

around wire. I will always wonder

if I can take you, know you will always be stronger,

and marvel at how you appear even larger

than before with my niece cupped

in your tattooed arms. I know something simple

provokes you to call: a comic book

we’ve both read, a good time

to visit, but my thumb hovers over decline

and I hold my breath before I press

against the waiting answer.

Before I left for Florida—a week after I tore

the collar of my shirt twisting out

of your grip, a week after

I disappeared with our shared car, the Venture

minivan we nicknamed Vendetta,

and brought it back to you

empty and smashed—you stopped to tell me

never come back. You meant it. I said

I wouldn’t. I meant flinching

is something I’d only do in oncoming light, never

in the overcoat of a shadow; being the size of

a threat did strange things to my tongue.

Tell me about the night I hurled a phone receiver

at your head and the orb of blood on your lip

seemed like it’d never fall, how you

bound me by a wrist, bruised my ribs against the floor,

and never threw a single punch. Wasn’t that

a kind of gentleness, Jabari?

Chionophobia: Fear of Snow

Chionophobia

Fear of Snow

Fluttering ash dissolves on your brother’s tongue.

He thinks of you building a fort from snow

before you knew what forts were

and he could stand in your footprints

without touching the sides.

Can two snowflakes be the same

on a ghost-white street where enough gather

to construct faceless snowmen? In this desert,

sand blinds the way snow did back home.

Your brother patches holes

in men with names he can’t or won’t learn,

and wonders if, somehow, you are still here,

using an earthmover to pour sand

into foxholes. Do you still hear soldiers claw

at the shifting weight of their fresh graves,

or are there only silent arms and legs

in your dreams, bent like strange flowers?

Is the sun a flash grenade? This heat

is so heavy the fruit stands buckle and ripple

like mirages, but your brother shivers

remembering your mother’s shiver,

the way she sank to the ground, heavy

with news, and your body comes home again.

Your bone-colored casket repeats

its descent, sinks under the flag, and a thud

resounds. Fades. He still hears it.

The rub of your snow pants, the fallout

of snowball fights, every ice-ball slapping

garage, snowflakes dragged in circles