AFTER READING ABOUT MY FRIEND’S HOMELESS SON SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE by Michael Meyerhofer

AFTER READING ABOUT MY FRIEND’S HOMELESS SON SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE

         For Susan Vespoli

I remember my brother calling
from somewhere in South Dakota
to say he quit his job cleaning rooms
because they’re stealing his tips
and now he’s just wandering
along a sunburnt stretch of highway
and doesn’t give a fuck what happens,
maybe he’ll sleep in a park, maybe
a ditch or under a bridge, stop trying
to talk him into turning around.

Later, out of beer, he stopped
at some abandoned campground
and stared at muddy water until a cop
exited an inferno-crested cruiser
to ask if he’s okay, mentioned
dirty dishes and a help wanted sign
down the road – but by then, my brother
had changed his mind, maybe
he was wrong about the tips,
maybe it’s time he stopped running

from an abandoned law degree
and a mother whose kidneys he failed
to heal with a touch, so the cop
gave him twenty bucks and a ride
to the only bus station. I don’t see hope
as a flower – more like a bucket
that never gets washed. By hospice,
he was furious that I wouldn’t carry him
to the toilet, forgetting the tubes
already woven through his plumbing.

Then, five months after they told us
where we could stop to pick up
my brother’s clothes, phone, ashes,
I got another call from my father saying
my stepbrother had been killed
by some cop in Milwaukee, his back
too tempting a target as he ran
from a crashed car with broken glasses
and a handgun. They never met,
my brother and stepbrother – likewise

these cops from different states,
bulging hips and someone who worries
when they don’t answer. Yesterday,
my father confessed his newfound belief
in a flat earth – some nonsense
about wind speed, global conspiracies –
and I pictured a broad stairway
past melting bridges and rusty stars,
a sun that crisps the back of your neck
the moment you try to look away.

*

Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry – including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (free from Doubleback Books). His work has appeared in The Sun, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Brevity, Rattle and other journals. He’s also the author of a fantasy series. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.