My Brother Prometheus

Poem for August 20, 2024

My Brother Prometheus

My sisters held court in the corner
while my brother Prometheus made dick jokes
which endeared him to the doctors
they took his liver anyway
while we played hangman

                       fluorescence
         marble echoes
                             blue

Regret has no taste
it is not copper-tongued
regret is knowing you cannot unsee
that remembered dream
tremors like death throes
yellow eyes rolled back
to find some glimpse of Hades
a nightmare as real as breath

                  intubation
                           raw incision
                     orange

Later I dreamed of Medusa
her hair fell around me
and I thought how lovely she was
how comforting in her beauty
a gaze like a gift, an invitation
to join the stoic anesthetization

                     enrapture
                        falling
                         black

My brother Prometheus said:
        Now that I don’t have constant misery
        the days go way too fast
the lesson I learned is this:
        you can’t turn to stone
        when you are chained to a rock
I miss her eyes even though
there is silence, there are dick jokes, there is

                            transfusion
                                         tears and
                                     red

---

---

This weekend, my family celebrated my dad’s 85th birthday and my mom’s 80th birthday. Every grandkid made it back, and we had a fabulous time.

We also quietly celebrated the one-year anniversary of my brother having a liver transplant. I’ll let you imagine what that was like by reading this poem. But I’ll give you the before and after.

One year ago

This weekend:

---