Brother
John Rybicki

I know I've smashed your mouth mute, that your wrists
          are busy churning in other waters,
but what's a brother to do?

Pitch marbles at the same curb and chalk in by shadows
          of the day the shape of brother
where he sat, and crosshatch

the concrete with chalk. For the sun it never sits still,
          and what's a brother with a fish
in his pocket, a piece of chalk,

and a chin that can't lift itself, what's that brother to do?
          Take the kite snapping in the branches,
that shipwreck in the shirt pocket

of a boy so much bigger than us, and what with the fire
          hydrants with their corks blown out,
and the rain tapping into puddles,

all those dancers born wet from the sky with feet, only feet,
          your body, its chalky configurations
dissolving on the pavement.

Here in this garden where sneakers melt around a boy's feet,
          `the more they melt the lighter he gets,
charging like some hurdler

no-handed over fences, or crossing the earth lunging from roof
          to roof to deliver the news.
And what with the rain

stampede and this brother who won't go in, won't heed the elms
          swatting away at him-get off the street boy,
go home.

I buy another bottle-a-pop and drink it to the bottom, twirling it
          in the moonlight of that streetlight,
and fling baseball cards

like playing cards across the concrete to this chalky boy
          sitting at the table. You tell me, brother
what's a brother to do?

© John Rybicki

John Rybicki's main gig, his missionary work, is teaching creative writing to inner-city children in Detroit. He tours the land teaching students at various colleges and schools about the holiness of a sentence. Every day he falls in love with stuff like the slightest trembling of a leaf. His wife is his sun and moon and more. And when he isn't teaching, or hammering away at the page, he likes to roll around in the dirt doing carpentry.

His poems and stories have appeared in the North American Review, Bomb, Field, Ohio Review, The Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, as well as in numerous anthologies. His first book of poems, Traveling at High Speeds, is out on New Issues Poetry Press. And he has a chapbook, Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider, forthcoming on March Street Press. His second book of poems is Fire Psalm.

© New Issues

© March Street