North American Review posted my short prose piece on death, poetry, and memory at their blog: http://northamericanreview.org/michele-leavitt-blog/ Below is the poem that’s the subject of the blog entry.
Near-Elegy for Brother James
Just seven days ago, my palm
consoled your shoulder blades, as if
it read your future. This year of deaths
is almost done, and you are not dead yet,
just out of ICU with kicked-in ribs,
an eyelid split, and still hung over.
The screen porch steams with sausage,
shrimp, and corn, our family celebrating
one more baby with a feast. Across
the dusty street, our little girls
collect the cotton bolls a combine
left behind, and bunch them up
in thorny, white bouquets. Our last
surviving brother picks guitar.
The baby’s grandma cannot stand
the travesty of nothing hard
to drink. She leaves. You stay. You’re quite
a trooper. You draw the line at
coming back indoors with me to hear
our newest mother’s poem on hope.
(P.S. Note the shout-out in the blog to Kim Bridgford‘s excellent journal, Mezzo Cammin, where more of my elegies for family members are published.)
Michele Sharpe 