Fraternity
BY SAM SAX
& here i am: somewhere
in the middle of my life
in the middle of texas
listening to a man
on the radio tell the story
of two brothers falling
from a high rise: one
survives, the other does
what you’d expect,
& i am lying on my back
listening for the sound
of skin against pavement,
for the radio to start
spilling over its limbs
& every place i’ve ever lived
was a desert once & will
become desert again: i call
my brother just to hear him
breathing & he’s an empty
sound, a scythe knifing still air:
how you can look back
on a life & see only salt there
& isn’t this gravity: the planet
sprinting through blackness
while i listen to another man
grieve his dead, knowing
my own brother might outlive me,
his voice a stone falling
through the line, landing
somewhere wet inside me
& outside my window
in the middle of texas
in the middle of the street
two boys in matching greek
jackets stumble drunk
through the dark, arms
desperate for the other,
bearing their terrible closeness,
fighting god to stay erect.
Classics
BY SAM SAX
After Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
Always the sensitive child
The needle on my father’s record player
Would jump at the suggestion of movement
When dancing the lyric would become
For many hours my love wind
All of my love
As it stood the standards were best played out of sequence
& vinyl was a new country to sink your teeth in
For fear of ruining the music
I’d let each note drag its battery through my stillness
& still were the wild legs of my heart
If only i’d known what loss would cause
The glasses to come crashing out of their cabinet
What needle would exaggerate each fingerprint left
Always tender i’ve grown into the kind of man who can’t walk
Through the produce aisle without weeping
Hearing my dead lover in the water & wind
Spilling over the collards
Every grapefruit tragic & taunting with its bitterness
& its sweet