Filius Iesu

First time I tasted death, it was your eyes,
your child’s busted lip, a swing set chain.
The other sang and stacked her mud for pies.
I watched you drool your dreams, a sun-cured brain.
Those paint-hewn hands, the winners of no prize.
Your lids aflutter, each a sleep-pocked stain
that dreamt of pale-faced trembles, hunks of brass
you carried through all stations of the grass.

I searched through bricks n’ bats n’ pindrop streets,
through belt laps, maple skins, your endless fall.
My body larval curled to hear your bleat,
I found just dreammilk dribbled in the hall.
Are there cracks where weeds like us can grow?
Must I shuck sanded clams to find your bones?

Long ago, milk spilled concentric on the floor.
You left me, the snake plant, the clapboard cape.
Your sagging pants, a dime bag out the door,
your skin’s gray vapor thick in the wind’s wake.
I said, Brother, when your kingdom comes ashore,
I’ll be waiting rusted tables at the break.
I could have told you of Nepenthe’s black.
I could have told you then your ship would crack.

ξ

Mary Dwyer is a creative writing MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame, where she will serve as an editor for The Notre Dame Review in the 2021–22 school year. In her first year, she worked for the University's “Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance” lecture series, and for the summer of 2021, she interned at Park & Fine Literary and Media through the the Nicholas Sparks Fellowship. She splits her time between Brooklyn, NY and Mishawaka, IN.