I meant to write about civil war but it became about brothers. So I wrote about those brothers but it became more about their love. And I wrote those poems of love even when they bent deceitful. In fact I reveled in their deceits, until it became only about ghosts. Then I wrote the ghosts and it was war again, dead bodies, and I was back at the beginning.

Variations of a Brother War ( Explosions Triptych ) 

Miller

Miller has his eyes on the sun. The sun is moving. He is keeping it in long view enough to see it crawling across a sky that is bright. A blue sky. It is a summer sky. This is late summer when fall is not yet. This is the heat of summer. There are trees. There are birds in trees. There is Miller taking it in, in his arms, collecting bees. This was what it was like to be before Gideon, his brother, opened up his mind to the possibility of not existing. This was before Miller he went ghosted.

Miller’s Mother

Miller is watching a fish. The fish is a trout. Miller can see it beneath the water. The river bends and the fish bends with it. This is an oil-canvas. This is slightly sunned, early summer, leaves couched above and shading. Miller is dreaming of his mother. Of her holding him. Miller is thinking of what it meant to be a baby, to be a child, to care above the rifles and noise. Above the cannon-fire. The grey cloud-smoke. What it meant to have Gideon, his brother, take aim and point a bullet from ear to ear, through him completely.

Miller’s Eliza

Miller stood looking at a squirrel. Miller looking into the river. Miller walked to the lake. A sky above him and it was raining. There was rain. This was spring. This was late when thunder gathers. This was cotton in his ears from blooming flowers. This was condensed grey. He was remembering about Eliza. He was wishing her hands in his or her lips pulsing his ear or her cheek against his chest in the rain, their bodies wet. He was remembering when it was that Gideon, his brother, shot him through the skull and took those imaginings with him.

Variations of a Brother War ( Civility Triptych ) 

Gideon Takes Eliza Off Her Horse

Eliza rides up and her cabin door is open. Gideon is standing near it, his pants iron-creased. There is morning air but no valley mist. Eliza’s jaunt was bright. The trees tremble. Gideon has his hands in his pockets, always hiding fists. He reaches to her. Gideon helps Eliza down from her horse. Her laced up boots and the slight bustle of her dress. Inside of the cabin is a bed and a chair and a table. Inside Eliza are candles. Gideon is a man who takes. Gideon takes Eliza off her horse. Gideon takes the maybe from her head.

Miller & Gideon Feel Their Father’s Blood

Before Miller’s father went he said keep the trees on the land, ride the horses near the river, cross your hearts before you die. Before Gideon’s father went he made the motion of a rifle and the mimic of taking aim. And before their father died, Miller and Gideon were sitting around a fire, their mother scrubbing shirts in a basin. The canon fire hadn’t reached this valley, the flames hadn’t burned down love. Miller heard the bullet explode in his chest. Gideon tasted the copper of dying on the back of his teeth. Their father, bleeding into undressed fields. 

Miller Picks Flowers

Eliza reaches to take hold of them, the delicate yellow like a pillowed star. Miller is a man who is a gentleman. Miller is a man who arm-wrestles, who gloats over won bacon, but who waits for a woman to bring her love to him in a basket of fruit and napkins. Miller sees the reflection of flowers in the gloss of Eliza’s eyes. Miller sees a vision of Gideon floating away. Miller sees his father in broken stillness, unkempt in bloodied grass. Eliza, in the flower, opens up, unfurls. Sails of her hair take wind and she becomes sun.

Variations of a Brother War ( Tasting Triptych ) 

If There is Miller

For Eliza, there is always the possibility of what her children would look like if she held Miller’s hand for long enough. His slender fingers, his poetic recessions. There is a sky above them when they are on their backs, in the meadow, the valley an open slope leading back to bodies. There is only sensibility in this, Miller and Eliza, when she is with. There is no meat uncured in her stores, no bread unbaked and wanting. When it is Miller, there is only want for Miller. And Miller’s hands. And Miller’s eyes. And the feet he walks upon.

When There is Gideon

For Eliza, there is always the possibility of her children with Gideon, their hair open and unlocked, like their father’s, if she was able to hold her breath with him forever. Because Gideon is a habit. Because Gideon is a sin of this youth. Because Gideon is a tree in a forest that she is drawn to, that she carves her name in, that she sits beneath and weeps for the want of climbing. And then there is the sky above them, with its broken clouds, the movement of their bodies, one on another, the motion of a perpetual world.

Because It Has Never Been

For Eliza, there is always the possibility that she will never have children because she will never have children. Walnuts drop from the trees, mist hangs in the valley, and the field mice are always looking for a way into and up her skirt. And it has always only been about sun, about light reaching down, about finding arms that will match what a mother would have been. If Eliza would have been a mother. If being a mother is a possibility. If anything other than warfare and cities burning is ever going to replace what once was a womb.