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.
