David Winter
Hallucinations
My brother Daniel’s body glides the banister
off-kilter, upends─
his skull opening like a pomegranate.
The unasked-for image acts on my stomach
like a needle passing through my earlobe
in our bathroom mirror. He always balanced
well, and made little of many minor injuries:
a tooth chipped on asphalt, a wrist broken
in our uncle’s wine cellar, a bruised tailbone
and sprained everything in skating accidents.
My father, who has suffered from a boyhood
back injury for decades, remarks on children
who ride bikes without helmets. I alone see
Daniel’s death phantom bland moments─
but he grins, as much a boy as a man, asking
if I’m alright. I don’t say what I’ve seen: skull
scattered on pavement, taut limbs gone limp,
his half-cry cleaning crickets from the night.
Poem
There isn’t any, only the bloodied sea, welling and receding beneath twin lids. No image of
the erotic, black scrap of pressure, cheap lace strung over a filial posture. No narrative
tailored to what is withheld, to appropriation’s conspicuous absence, his whorish heels
propping up our kitchened life. No week lived like a wedding’s fear, his labia pinned to the
dark and consent stripped of history. None of William’s teeth turning up in the sheets, in
perfumed envelopes, in our studied mouths. Nothing I write and write and cannot reckon─
David Winter is the author of a chapbook, Safe House (Thrush Press, 2013). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Four Way Review, Atlanta Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Nervous Breakdown, and Magma. He has taught creative writing in jails, at an LGBT senior center, and to public high school students. He is currently an MFA student in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University and an associate poetry editor for The Journal.
Return to January 2014 Edition
My brother Daniel’s body glides the banister
off-kilter, upends─
his skull opening like a pomegranate.
The unasked-for image acts on my stomach
like a needle passing through my earlobe
in our bathroom mirror. He always balanced
well, and made little of many minor injuries:
a tooth chipped on asphalt, a wrist broken
in our uncle’s wine cellar, a bruised tailbone
and sprained everything in skating accidents.
My father, who has suffered from a boyhood
back injury for decades, remarks on children
who ride bikes without helmets. I alone see
Daniel’s death phantom bland moments─
but he grins, as much a boy as a man, asking
if I’m alright. I don’t say what I’ve seen: skull
scattered on pavement, taut limbs gone limp,
his half-cry cleaning crickets from the night.
Poem
There isn’t any, only the bloodied sea, welling and receding beneath twin lids. No image of
the erotic, black scrap of pressure, cheap lace strung over a filial posture. No narrative
tailored to what is withheld, to appropriation’s conspicuous absence, his whorish heels
propping up our kitchened life. No week lived like a wedding’s fear, his labia pinned to the
dark and consent stripped of history. None of William’s teeth turning up in the sheets, in
perfumed envelopes, in our studied mouths. Nothing I write and write and cannot reckon─
David Winter is the author of a chapbook, Safe House (Thrush Press, 2013). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Four Way Review, Atlanta Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Nervous Breakdown, and Magma. He has taught creative writing in jails, at an LGBT senior center, and to public high school students. He is currently an MFA student in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University and an associate poetry editor for The Journal.
Return to January 2014 Edition