Amanda Chiado

Potatoes

When my parents say we should make gravy

I have to find my brother like a foreigner

Searches for mushrooms in a wasteland.

I trip rock by rock through the quarry.

My brother sits at the table, leather jacket on

And we hover like pieces of chess.  He might run

But I get home without being clawed.  He might

Run so my mother keeps a tear in her eye,

A weapon always laying in wait in a heart

Upstairs.  All of us speak so much of weather

We might shift the winds with our small talk

For Dorothy and all of us that say go home.

Holding my brother after all those mashed

Potatoes makes me hate how much a body fails.

My mother gives birth to miniature storms, cries 

Silvery bullets.  My father, snores to a crime show.

My brother kisses his hand too long.  I say fly.

My brother walks up the street into the limelight

In some angelic goodbye, we send him off with eyes

Because when someone loves you, they watch you go.