Patrillineage
I.
My brother is schizophrenic and obese.
I used to take him to movies: Batman,
War of the Worlds. He’d hulk in the passenger
seat of my Ford Escort, couldn’t
get the seat belt all the way around his stomach
There are many things we would not say.
I have not had a car in
twelve years I crashed them all I was in trouble
it costs three hundred dollars to get your license
back I can’t do it.
II.
When did a boy’s mind first split? Mercury accumulates
in the flesh. In this family
male conception is a lottery. What a roll:
the anxious manic schizo—our father’s father riding high
on old money brains gone drunk
between England, Germany,
America—Good English Boys did not marry
good German girls in 1936—sold all
but Maine scrub pine, this squat gardener’s cottage
reclaimed by salt marsh every rain storm.
III.
You can feel it between here and the passenger seat
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat: My double,
my brother, my other. Each what the other
might be, his skin half mine, my lineage half his,
our father one of our halves and our mothers—
oh, they are something else.
IV.
Half the time I’d let him
buy me a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee
thinking to make him happy—$1.51 Social Security spent
on sister not scratch tickets or cigars, fat candy bars.
His iced, three packets of Splenda©, cream.
Mine hot, sugar-and-milk, thank you.
What a strange parade of life here in Gloucester,
Massachusetts: motorcyclists and fishermen,
Brazilians and doughnut-sugared children; it seems
we are no stranger.
V.
Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:
“Distinction between delusion and strongly held
idea is—sometimes—difficult, depends on a degree
of conviction, despite clear contradiction, although
bizarre delusions are especially characteristic,
“bizarreness” may be difficult to judge.
Delusions are deemed bizarre if clearly
implausible and not understandable and do not
derive from ordinary life experiences. Disorganized
thinking a most important feature May “slip
off the track” one topic to another answers
to questions obliquely related .”
VI.
Dipping below the surface costs too much. We stay
above with names: Zoloft Rosiglitazone Prozac Buspar.
I swear I have only offered an ear, will not divide
distance: Hillcrest Program Housing to Salem train station,
Social Security to meals rent doctor’s utilities. Driving you home
from the movies we listened to The Cure, Pearl Jam. I never said
I’d dug up the cassette tapes summers ago from bags
left out in the barn, salvaged from your last apartment—
when cops found you disassembled, cocaine. I went to college
left you with “Boys Don’t Cry,” my address, “Galore,” a calling card.
VII.
A soggy May, two weeks of rain. Manic they sent you
to Bayridge. Security gave me a name tag. At a table
you showed me the flag of Iceland. Medicine eyes
patrolled my face—waiting for the mouth to twitch
a pregnant woman named Mary, blonde out at the roots,
laughed like a witch with her hands on her belly
poured decaffeinated coffee into a cup with a lump
of powdered creamer, handed it to me. Our father
asked me how you were, said I was good.
VIII.
Brother, in Saint Paul
these bricks are snowed in.
Brother, I am split.
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