The Minor Bridge Between Us & Other Poems
CW: incarceration, addiction, unnamed trauma
This Minor Bridge between Us
What you wanted to leave me was metaphor. What you left
was a black-and-white notebook from the commissary
that might contain the mystery of you: your bent words soaked
in remnants your body heaved up for two weeks in solitary
while you were dope sick. I’ve been airing you out
for days now, though Brother, my fingers bear the rigid
scent of that cell where you hardly slept, your nostrils
inflamed with bologna & spoiled milk, shit
caked on the walls. I’m reconsidering the theory that we can
get used to anything. Not this. Not the stank of impossible
history that like a small child only gets older, even
for you. I’m sorry to say you’re testing my patience, that
sometimes prison reeks badly enough to ruin this minor bridge
between us, that as I dig your piss-stenched psychology
from a plastic container in the closet, I must turn my face from
you. When all you wanted was for someone you loved to examine
your teeth, to know this, right now, was what you were thinking.
Small-Scale Brother
It must have been hard to concentrate, your body turning
away from everyday living—inside it, the inclination
of petty rapture towards demise. But to practice restraint
is crueler, you’d say, than what made you an addict
in the first place, so I condition myself into apologizing,
which only makes things worse, your frame so fragile
& so full of longing that sitting beside me in the passenger
seat of my car, once, you steadily began to shrink,
though never vanishing entirely, the way an 80’s song
has no decisive ending & rather the sound just …
trails off. & the sad fact of distance is this: the opposite
can hurt just as badly. You, for instance, leaning in
with your bloodshot eyes & asking me again for money.
& Brother, as your small self continued to act in your best
interest, you became more & more reliant on me, your
brother-ness slowly dwindling into Magritte’s anonymous
man in an overcoat who indeed bit into that green apple,
an outfit & a meal you never would have chosen for yourself.
& as I unbuckled your seatbelt & carried your shrunken
body around in my palm that day, your voice grew quieter
& quieter until you lost the ability to speak, so I had to leave
you to it. All of it: wonder, time killed, another storm.
A tiny spot in the flowerbed as only the grave, in this saga,
could be your body’s first witness, a fact which unraveled
the absurdity in all things. Anger, for instance, which tightens
inside the jaw but traipses onto the field precisely as it is
too late. Or a child, who not knowing any better, is delicate
with the vilest insect. & Brother, you too were so mad & so
gentle, always looking up at me in dire predicament, tiny arms
outstretched, knowing were you to hold your own hand tenderly
enough, finally, the whole of you would disappear.
Mid-Trauma Sonnet
Once, you slapped your cheek
so hard you felt the burn less in your face
& more in your hand. How you happened to be
wild had nothing to do with wildness
& everything to do with knowing
someone else disapproved. You spent four
days at the bedside of a stranger
& your annoyance was also your envy.
Outside, there were dogs running
amok in a graveyard & you called me by a name
that was not yours. There must be more
than fear to live inside of. How mid-day, or mid-
beauty, or mid-trauma, a rose knows little
of its shadow along the fence.
Susan L. Leary is the author of More Flowers (Trio House Press, forthcoming 2026); Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser to win the 2023 Louise Bogan Award; and the chapbook, A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, Harpur Palate, Tahoma Literary Review, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN.
