Another City


In the ending of my brother’s life, 
which is not the real ending of my brother’s life, 
there will not be abandoned train tracks, 
his shoulders fitted as if in a casket 
between the rails.  

The city of his murder—its sidewalks 
of trash and second-hand stores— 
will no longer be the place 
where, at twenty-one, my brother wanders 
beyond street lamps for a dime bag of dope 
only to be assaulted by the purple force 
of a tire iron.

In another city—the only one I can imagine
if he had lived—waits the arthritis 
which will, for these few moments, 
haunt my brother’s knees
at sixty.  It’s a cold city where wind 
travels hard through the streets and his lungs 
struggle from nicotine ache.  

Above a twenty-four hour 
dry cleaner is a small apartment 
where my brother, pepper-grey moustache,
watches television, his cigarette smoke 
with each slow year
paints the ceiling yellow.

Evening after evening he wanders
this city—past a parking lot half-filled 
with rusted cars, a motel whose few tenants 
shoot heroin behind locked doors.  
Here it is always December,
my brother one of several 
grim men walking the sidewalk.
  
And because he has no money 
and the drunks at the bar 
seldom remember his name, my brother,
lost in a storm of thoughts,
dials my house at a blurry hour
on one of those curbside payphones
that has survived
well beyond its real end.

Tired, I will not consider 
how good it is to hear his voice 
or how fortunate I am
he wants to joke about the Red Sox 
last place finish—his fingers grasping 
the metal cord tight—but will only 
feel bothered, pulled once again 
from my welcomed sleep
by the burden of his needs.
 



​
​Doogie's House


I watched each Thursday night, 9:30,
on the twenty-five pound television I rescued from the basement
when I was twelve, its twisted rabbit ears barely capable 
of capturing the distant signal of Doogie Howser, M.D.  
This was the half-hour I sealed myself in my bedroom 
away from my mother sitting at the kitchen table 
blankly staring at the unwashed floor. 
Doogie's parents—Katherine and David—might have quarreled 
with Doogie over his purchasing a '57 Chevy convertible, 
but in the end problems dissolved— 
of course Doogie would return the very-red convertible 
and make instead a thoughtful donation 
to the Lackmore Institute for childhood leukemia research. 
And then there was Doogie's genius: 
perfect SAT score at six, Princeton graduate at ten, 
licensed physician by the age of fourteen.

Not that I identified with Doogie—who could?
But in each episode there was Vinnie Delpino, 
Doogie's best friend, who—like me—struggled
to distinguish himself; his father too was distant 
as the icy blue sky. And even if Vinnie's mother wasn't lost 
in a black fog depression, both of us wanted to be included 
in the annual Howser family camping getaway.  
When Vinnie entered Doogie's house I sensed his relief 
at the living room's cleanliness: no lopsided pile 
of newspapers, months old, by the broken lamp, 
no dinner-plate size wine stain on the dirty couch.

And then there were those invented episodes 
of me taking Vinnie's place. Afternoon upon afternoon 
I walked from school imagining I was headed 
toward the safety net of Doogie's house.  
Me—his welcomed best friend—listening to Doogie 
recount how his gifted mind solved 
each problem at Eastman Medical Center.  
Even though Doogie had no interest in sports,
his father would still be my basketball coach— 
he'd be the one to insist 
I had the best ball-handling skills on the team.

It didn't matter if my own father, drunk, 
walked angrily past my room. The door was locked 
and once again I had successfully contorted 
the television's rabbit ears to produce 
an only slightly-blurry signal. Hours after the episode ended 
it was Doogie's mother I heard 
carrying the Howser family laundry down our hallway.
It was her dress that brushed against my door.