Two Poems by Kerrin McCadden

Weeks After My Brother Overdoses

I search craigslist for sadness: a white couch the only result.
Happiness lands red shipping containers, and that’s it.
I wander through days like an envelope marked please forward.
Listen. My brother is a ghost. I keep thinking I am not a sister
anymore, though others assure me I still am. Just sister them,
builders say to make a thicker beam, or to span a distance,
join the faces of two-by-sixes with nails, make more from less,
make do. No one will let me have my sadness or tally
what I’ve lost. I make lists like recipes for how to go on alone.
I draw his death when I doodle, making little crime scenes,
as if this epidemic were a murderer, a suspect, a criminal.
I draw him on every sidewalk to inflate the numbers, to give
my brother to everyone. Inside the outline, I do some math.
I add him to seventy-two-thousand, and subtract him from me.

reverse overdose

my brother’s heart is transplanted into a young man
machines keep my brother’s organs alive for days
he is declared brain dead my brother’s hand is so warm
I think he will wake up I sit and hold my brother’s hand
I rush to the hospital my brother’s lips are blue and he’s not
asleep his roommate calls 911 she thinks he is asleep he falls
off the wagon he buys something for the pain he tells
his roommate he needs to go meet a friend desperate men
swap heroin for fentanyl she heads out to the clinic
his neck hurts all the methadone is out of his system

§

it’s morning he’s a good dad he rides his bike for miles
to see his son every weekend I try to get him into a shelter
but he can’t afford the train across the city to the clinic
he comes clean I try to save him when he’s homeless once
he comes clean he rides his bike to see his son the summer
he loses custody or his wife kicks him out because she’s
into someone else his wife kicks him out because she is high
he comes clean they have a baby boy they are high and low
high and low high and low a photo of him as the handsomest
man I’ve ever seen I don’t recognize him he comes clean

§

he marries a beautiful junkie he’s high all the time a photo
of him with dreadlocks and a sheepish smile at christmas
he invites friends with gold teeth and guns to the woods
where we live he runs out of food but won’t ask for help
he comes clean I bring him to live in the woods with me
I try to bring him something in jail but nothing is allowed
he misses my wedding I save his border collie he goes to jail
for selling a 40 pounds of pot in a suitcase our father reaches
for his garden shovel men come to my parents’ front door
looking for my brother we watch SNL while he is high

§

his dog eats his garbage and the linoleum in his apartment
and shakes he steals our grandmother’s silver dollars
he breaks in through our windows and skylights and takes
our stereo and whatever else our parents kick him out
he grows pot in his closet and our parents call the cops
a photo of him in a neck brace at a dead show his afro in the sun
doctors bring him to the quadriplegic ward so he can know
he’s lucky doctors fuse a piece of his hipbone to his spine
he breaks his neck but doesn’t know for days his dirt bike flies
over a cliff he delivers the early newspaper with our dad

§

he hates hockey our dad plays hockey so he plays hockey
too I find him on the coffee table driving the zamboni between
periods of the bruins games he squeals when loose puck
is on the ice yells dad, loose puck is playing I hear him
in his room saying body of christ amen body of christ amen
I lie and tell on him for hitting me a photo of him in a flowered
ski coat and fireman boots and hockey stick I ask my parents
for a lock for my bedroom door he tells me he came from
a dinosaur egg I ask him where he came from what his name
used to be we have a homecoming party for him in the back yard

§

a photo of him waving on the picnic table wearing a bow-tie
and a bow on his head we bring him home red-cheeked
and blond he holds my fingers and tries to walk I meet
my new brother on boston common my brother saves our mother’s
life I visit my mother and swing from the bar above her bed
my mother has open heart surgery doctors find a hole in her heart
during the pre-adoption exam the agency wants to make sure
my parents are fit to parent I eat canned spaghetti sandwiches
on wonder bread when they visit social workers visit to make sure
we have a good home my parents apply for a new baby boy

Kerrin McCadden is the author of Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize and the Vermont Book Award. An NEA Fellow, her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry and appear recently or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in South Burlington, Vermont.