Years ago, when my brother learned his wife was leaving him,
he needed a meeting, so we drove to South Perry
where years before he got me sober. We didn’t know Erica
had met someone in a bar that Christmas down in Naples,
a Swedish businessman celebrating his daughter’s birthday.
At the meeting we glimpsed spirituality, how truth fucks us up
and still sets us free. During the Lord’s prayer, I stood between
Tom who wore the quiet perfume of diesel (like my dead husband)
and Jim who resembled a short Yves Montand. In a previous life,
(we all had them, lives we were desperate to save) Jim drove limos
for the rich and famous. He chanted the same advice over and over,
and whatever it was, I can’t remember. In the early days I would cling
to it like a woman to an opaque mirror, gleaning whatever truth, ugly or not.
The block basement of this union hall— a place we stepped outside
ourselves and smoked a cigarette and went back in and sat down
and felt like our old selves again.
Mark relapsed once his divorce came through. And now
that my brother is dead, since May, of something they couldn’t figure out
I can’t get Erica out of my head. When she came to pay respects, she drank
and drank, held my cheeks in her hands, and looked at me with her big brandy eyes
and said, I couldn’t live with him… he was impossible not to love.
Jane Ann Fuller is a recipient of the James Boatwright III Poetry Prize. She is a Best of The Net nominee, and her book, Half-Life, was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence awards. Look for her poetry in Cimarron, Bear Review, SWWIM, Hunger Mountain, BODY Lit., The MacGuffin, and other fine literary journals, and on her webpage: janeannfullerpoetry.com.
Image: “Elle parle doucement (She speaks softly)” by JC Alfier
JC Alfier is a poet and photo-artist whose aesthetics are informed by Yoko Mizuki, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.
