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Brandon Courtney

Abstain

Sober six months,   my lover keeps
a bottle of  bourbon   in the liquor 
cabinet to remind him  of what he 
can   no longer  have,    no   longer
swallow.         Between              his 
comforter――musky    sheets――he 
keeps   the   same:       sleep,       the
unsteady raft of my breathing, my 
cock,   gone soft as a wet  sleeve in 
his    dormant   hand.   Last    year,
drunk,   he mistook my throat  for 
coal,   constricted    both    fists――
knuckle s   tight    as   execuioner’s 
knots――until     what he held was
more   beautiful  than     diamond: 
blood-drop pearls,       bouquet of 
blue  veins,  purpled  necklace   of
fingerprints.  Once, in Abilene, he 
lifted  a  longhorn’s   skull  from  a
patch   of   poison   ivy,    held   its 
crown,   its   crescent   horns   to  a
spindrift of  stars, and  showed me  
how, like every animal,  the moon 
lies down sideways to die.  




Public Lashing, Iraq, 2004


Two  men  with  no less thirst, no 
less     need       for      lust      kneel, 
dishonored,   the sand under their 
knees ignorant   to a body bent in 
prayer――a coin    of breath kissed
into   the     offering   plate  of  his 
chest,     the Roman arch his spine 
invents         in          orgasm――or 
punishment.      A      dozen lashes, 
each labial    gash a  hymnal of sin,
their     shoulders memorizing the 
shap  of the cleric’s cane.   How, a
year in Iraq,     are your teeth―the
bruises’ sucked    to the surface  of 
my neck―the  only  proof   I have 
of war.    You will never hone the
knife     of    your   tongue    sharp 
enough to kill.     Tonight, on the 
banks  of the Tigris,  you pour an 
hourglass  worth   of   sand   from 
your boots,     spin your wedding 
ring before pocketing it,  as if the
dead―your    wife―were looking
down into the black water of our 
bodies,   watching from the trellis 
of heaven’s bridge.  What are you 
waiting for?     The night is never
dark  enough    for  our  bodies to 
hide;    the   night  is   never  dark  
enough to sleep.




Brandon Courtney was born and raised in Iowa, served four years in the United States Navy, and is a graduate of the MFA program at Hollins University. His poetry is forthcoming or appears in Best New Poets (’09), The Journal, Whiskey Island Review, Arcadia Magazine, 32 Poems, and The Los Angeles Review, among many others. Brandon’s work has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, and he recently won an Academy of American Poets Prize. His chapbook, “Improvised Devices,” will be published in Fall ’13 by Thrush Press.




Return to March 2013 Edition