After
The AC groaned in the weeds, reporters
paced the street, hoping to snatch a photo,
my brother, the famous outlaw, reloading his gun,
counting his cash in the backyard.
Next day, my brother vanished in the ivy,
leaving behind his loafers, empty wallet, a subway map.
My mother spent the weekend crying, then gave away his suits.
Detectives asked if I knew where he was.
I didn’t. After, my brother was different. He wore
sweat pants & a yellow cap, strummed
pop tunes on a ukelele, reciting
statistics & famous proverbs, his way of
demanding forgiveness. Waking up was
my way of not giving it. Remember, though,
the play unfolded on its own terms, I couldn’t edit the script.
I rode the scene until I buckled,
trying to recall what my brother said.
When I turned back to the text, I could never find
the lines I was looking for. The dead are coy,
stashing tax forms in a calendar, dropping hand-
written notes in the flophouses of your grief.
I spent months searching garages, tenement
basements, I took buses to the countryside,
determined to unearth some secret file. Once,
in a storage unit off the interstate, I found a
dry-cleaning receipt, a turntable, his favorite necktie.
These days I have to read my brother’s lips,
yank riddles from his blistered mouth.
I’m a cave raider, stealing his wet, green wishes,
carting his treasure up those watery stairs.
When I reach the light, I rummage in shallow pools,
ink & blood in the current, his words are gone.
*
Birdman
after the 2014 film
He gobbled three aspirins for a backache,
the sun trickling over the dais. The proud
mayor unveiled the state-funded statue,
council members & pedestrians politely applauding.
He adjusted his mask, remained in his seat
to see what would happen.
Of course, nothing happened.
The photographer caught him at a good angle,
he looked triumphant, trustworthy.
Already ten years had passed, he was
amazed by the stickies on his been-there map.
Thank-you notes from the governor hung from his wall.
Soon he’d need to renegotiate his contract.
He was weary, though, his memory a cluttered basement.
He usually felt irritable until around noon.
He didn’t know how age happened, where
it came from. But still he saw himself
as an immortal flapping against the night,
a born-again hero, vigilante in a bright limbo
sharpening his beak, gearing up for an encore.
Surely he could save the city one more time.
*
Barbie, 1978
for Janet Buck
Barbie was tired of catalogs, sick of her mother’s
bridal gown, honeymoon-talk, the closetful of
handbags & blouses. Frat boys in their top-
down convertibles trolled Calico Street, tapping
their horns. Love was a footnote at the end of a long
boring essay, & she was still stuck in the first paragraph.
She turned off the 8-track & removed her watch.
When she pressed her fingers to the smooth plastic
between her legs, it caved. A small pump delivered
three warm, sticky squirts. She spent the evening
searching for paradise, surges of want, demand,
even then, flares of guilt. She woke the next morning,
hair chopped into a bob, & couldn’t find her plat-
form shoes. She grabbed a glass apple, pretending
to take a bite. She imagined herself enduring a scandalous
affair, smashing a hotel tv, arrested, exiled, years spent
wandering desert towns looking for adventure. It sounded
great, but there was an intern party she couldn’t miss.
Suddenly the blue of the sky wasn’t so blue. The rainbow
looked like a bad painting. Were bulls stampeding in the
backyard? Was that what they called thunder? Had she
caught the bug of melancholy? She hurled a vase
against the wall. Eyes clenched, she ground her heel into
a shard, streaking blood across her immaculate floor.
*
John Amen was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and Tupelo Quarterly. His sixth collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by NYQ Books in May 2024.