Author/Uploaded by Will Harris
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 illust...
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