Brother Poem


 
 BROTHER POEM
 
 
 
 
 
 Wesleyan University Press
 Middletown CT 06459
 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
 Text and photographs copyright © 2023 Will Harris
 All rights reserved
 First published in Great Britain by Granta Poetry in 2023
 Manufactured in the United States of America
 Typeset in Minion by Hamish Ironside
 Front cover illustration and design by David Pearson
 The acknowledgements on pages 86 and 87 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
 Image on page 66 courtesy of the Prokudin-Gorskiĭ photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
 Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
 NAMES: Harris, Will, author.
 TITLE: Brother poem / Will Harris.
 OTHER TITLES: Brother poem (Compilation)
 DESCRIPTION: Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, [2023] | Series: Wesleyan poetry | Summary: “Poems whose central concern is a series of addresses to an absent brother, where the impossibility of speech comes to prefigure a different sort of kinship, one that extends beyond speech, which is intimate and communal, grieving and joyful, and endless”—Provided by publisher.
 IDENTIFIERS: LCCN 2022047664 (print) | LCCN 2022047665 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819500526 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780819500564 (ebook)
 SUBJECTS: BISAC: POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Family | POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Places
 CLASSIFICATION: LCC PR6108.A769 B76 2023 (print) | LCC PR6108. A769 (ebook) | DDC 821/.92 — dc23/eng/20221207
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047664
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047665
 5 4 3 2 1
 
 
 
 There stands the stump; with foreign voices other
 willows converse, beneath our, beneath those skies,
 and I am hushed, as if I’d lost a brother.
 – ANNA AKHMATOVA, ‘Willow’ (trans. JENNIFER REESER)
 
 
 
 CONTENTS
 ‘In June, outrageous stood the flagons …’
 Cuttlefish
 In Anxiety Dreams
 After ‘The Quinine Plant’
 Free Will
 New Year
 Voice Notes
 Coffee in October
 South London Mum
 Commute Songs
 Weather and Address
 ‘I wanted the walls painted blue …’
 Brother Poem
 Address and Weather
 ‘Take the origin of banal …’
 Acknowledgements
 
 
 
 In June, outrageous stood the flagons on
 the pavement which extended to the river
 where we spoke of everything except
 the fear that would, when habit ended, be
 depended on. Our fear of darkness as
 the fear of darkness never ending. To
 hell with it, you said, and why not? Let’s buy
 a dirty and slobbery farm in Albion. What
 country is this? There was the big loom
 we little mice were born to tarry in.
 Its patter made the bad things better. O
 we sang against the light as we sang
 against the battens! Cold that June and mist-
 shapen, the river mind and all else matter,
 I called you. Where are you? It’s getting
 dark. But these being statements, they ran
 away before I could say hummock coastline theft.
 This is where we used to speak of everything.
 I need one more hour please. One more
 hour. My affordable memories sold, I hung
 my phone from the highest flagpole and kissed
 the face of England once discreetly, though
 it wasn’t you and neither was the mist
 wherefrom in dingle darkness buzzed a single
 notification. Call me when you get this.
 And see I’m calling now, whether or not
 this is now or in time.
 
 
 Cuttlefish
 We were sitting on the floor. I started writing
 as the window darkened and the grass grew
 bright. By morning, half the trees were
 submarine. What was it about being young and
 wanting to write? You said it wasn’t choice, it
 was dictation: you had to ask. A frog leapt
 through the cat flap taking refuge by our feet.
 You knew I had a brother though we’d only met
 that night. Each time you forget and remember
 the experience becomes truer. Like lightning
 in reverse the fuse blew. I was stirring a pot
 of dal, your dog Annie asleep on the floor beside
 me, snoring. We went to a cafe whose name
 rhymed with dal, me playing with a small
 salt shaker, you talking about your brother. He had
 to go and you were about to go 
 In Anxiety Dreams
 Not seeing you had made it easier to talk.
 And I liked that while we talked I could
 look outside, only once checking my phone
 for messages. The shadow of my foot
 waved at me from the wall. With foreign
 voices other willows conversed. Too many
 tree analogies, you said. But by then I
 had a whole book of them, of which this
 was the first. I do it when I’m anxious. I’m
 always falling backwards, my suitcase falling
 with me. The cops waiting.
 This time we
 were on a boat, which was maybe awkward
 to say because it was meant to be a poem
 about trees and falling, the kind of dream that
 wakes you when you’re anxious. Said to be
 due to an arm falling away from the body
 or a flexed knee