My brother has two heads
he tells me, we’re ‘The voices are in the other head,’ I look around. He has a wardrobe, a few for music, Here in this room, I his whole life up I don’t know So I ask him about them, He grins - suspicious of ‘them,’ he says, ‘they talk about for us and where I listen to him. My brother. coming in, some just visiting and I look at my brother. for the first time Like me he has his blonde hair is Across his face his and I am shocked yes, the year of his birth that he’s only months The womb was still when you I say And as I hear his voice to when we were kids and We used to sit on the my brother discussing songs and girls, I remember one day over some The receiver set dropped its plastic shell I thought: ‘well that’s it...’ still worked well, even better My father, good with his a small repair, patching it Overall though, we would have my brother with that split |
sitting in his room. he says, ‘my other head hears them.’ a bed, a chair and a table, clothes and a radio - forever music. see, feel how his youth, to now, has fled. what to say. these voices he hears, these speakers me - he’s not specific: Truth and Jesus, what He did the world went wrong . . .’ And I imagine all the voices, going out, others staying with him. I feel like I’m looking in a long time. blue-grey eyes, but shorn to the bone. skin is tight, amber as I remember that is ‘63, the same as mine, younger than I am. warm from me, brother, were born, to myself. now, my thoughts go right back Dad gave us that transistor radio. front porch listening to the radio, and I, teasing our sisters, swearing . . . we had an argument, minor thing. to the stone floor - broke in two. but no! it kept going! than before in some ways. hands, saw it and made up, ‘like new’ he said. left it as it was, and I, at its centre. |
view PDF (139kb)
Page(s) 39-40
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The