I have somehow a strange brother     he

sheds white light in his wake     I’ve turned eight

and unfamiliar with any world

or complicated needs     so when our

shared father tasks cooking the chicken

 

to us I see no horizon but

set the bird at the end of my mind

***** a still point our shared future will reach

through fraternal effort     a manly

 

laying into the task     a worthy

evening such that when my bright brother

raises the baster like a blade I

understand nothing but wholesome use

***** the birthing beauty of its design

 

and when he says look down the neck hole

to see if I have sprayed the inside

of this bird fully with hot liquid

I kneel and crane and stare in my haze

 

of stark inhuman credulity

***** until blinded for the first time by

betrayal     or lesson in the form

of vital fluids carrots onion

and the red laugher of a brother

 

***

 

Dan Rosenberg is the author of The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press, 2012) and cadabra (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2015). His work has won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest. Rosenberg teaches literature and creative writing at Wells College and co-edits Transom.