I sometimes think that I remember these things wrong.  
How on the morning after my sister’s death  
my father swung his baseball bat  
through the car windshield  
that had held her shattered body   

How in the junkyard,  
My brothers and I stood behind him  
Watching the blood  
Drain from out of his hands  
And into the weapon  
Extended back to us/like the embrace  
Reserved only for us boys/who had broken open together.     

I am 13 years old forever/as I watch my brothers  
Take turns measuring the weight of the world/within their hands/ 
while I remain too young to kill the dead again/thus a boy unable to beat in the car   

Where his sister’s body imploded/instead becomes a witness to victory/a mouth to boyish
fingers/ready to kiss back home/every movement they will ever make/as the truth of that
woman’s body/empty and endless/spills down their throats/like gasoline   

Their father’s bat/a lit match in their mouths/as they dance against the summer heat/  
Throats shaken alive by the grief of their Mother’s God/who will soon be crushed under boyish hands/because in this story God can be humbled/in this story/God will fold under the swing  

Of a father’s baseball bat/while his boys scream their prayers/back through their chests  

And weep through hands fully broken.   

////////// 

David  
Began crying as soon as he struck the car.  

The baseball bat trembling inside his fingers  
Like an unspoken word.  

You must have already known  
That beating in her windshield  
Wouldn’t raise any woman from back out the ground.  

But I am thirteen years old forever  
when I begin crying behind you  
Tears down my cheek for the first time since her dying  

Because my brother was in pain  
My beautiful brother 

With chaos clenched between his teeth.  
His jaw, wide and trembling.  
How I loved him.  
How I still pray for those hands.  

/////// 

When the glass from the car moves past us  
And into our father  
We will watch in the fading light  
Our future rise towards us.  

Brothers with broken hands  
And a father’s arm wound around our chests.   

The broken spine of a Volkswagen  
falling down our throats  
and echoing through whatever is left  
of summer.  

Ian Powell-Palm is a writer, poet, and musician currently living in Belgrade, Montana. His work attempts to interrogate familial trauma, sexual identity, and the resurrection of the dead. You can read more of his poetry on Facebook at "Powell-Palm Poetry".