In My Brother’s House

by Cydnee Deveraux

Commissary fruit cocktail,
ketchup packets, bread butts
 

squirrelled out of the cafeteria—
some sugar ants flail
 

in the cloudy, noxious
liquid bagged and shoved
 

into the wall behind the toilet.
Bunk bed, sink, a tiny window
 

overlooking nothing. Signs
that caution HITCHHIKERS
 

MAY BE ESCAPED PRISONERS
hem the road to my brother’s house.
 

I’m patted down, wanded—
I can’t bring in a single thing
 

except a bag of coins.
In my brother’s house,
 

guests murmur like bystanders
of an accident. My brother’s
 

house has so many hoops
that by the time I jump
 

through them, it’s time
to take what’s left
 

of the coins and leave.
 
 

In My Brother’s House

Some scorching day in June,
twenty tons of potatoes—
 

the surplus of some other
prison’s garden— are trucked
 

in to my brother’s unit.
The kitchen’s menu amended,
 

potatoes mashed, boiled,
French fried, hashed, and slapped
 

onto cracked plastic trays.
Potatoes for every meal—
 

main course and both sides.
Three pounds of potatoes
 

a day for each man, useless
on the black market
 

for their plentitude. My brother
stole one to have something
 

of his own, to watch it grow—
he let it sprout eyes and fur.
 
 

In My Brother’s House

I have come here today
to smuggle in contraband.
 

Blinking at me through
years-old contact lenses
 

the prison physician
refuses to replace,
 

he describes the heat,
the rodents, the insects
 

the size of rodents.
The months when every
 

meal was potatoes. I look
at him. He is tired, pallid under
 

his rough white jumpsuit.
We are chastised like unruly
 

children for sitting too close.
When our hour is almost up,
 

he rests his head in his hands,
removes the cloudy contacts
 

from his eyes, swaps them
for the lenses I’ve trafficked
 

in on mine. We’re both weeping
when it’s time to say goodbye.
 
 

Poem in Which I Set My Brothers on Fire

From their wreckage, I built a pyre—
our battered mother, the punch-
 

pocked walls of our old homes—
and bound them to it. With the pearls
 

they stole from our grandmother,
I adorned their necks, stuffed
 

their pockets with pilfered cash
so they could pay the ferryman.
 

Yes, I was euphoric as I drenched
them in gasoline. Yes, I was joyous
 

as I dragged the match. Yes, yes,
it ignited and they ignited, their flesh
 

smoking black. Yes— I warmed
my hands over the fire. I hummed
 

along to the symphony of them
begging for their lives.