My Brother Stole Every Spoon in the House
so we don't eat soup anymore. We tried. The bonebroth fell right through our forks, our fingers, stainedthe carpets. We all learned to speak twelve languagesbut only the words for good morning and hospital.In Old Norse my mom learns the phrase whereare all the fucking spoons. Brian went outside, whisperedswears to the poplars. They bent their necks to hear him.Brian went outside and left forever, took the restof the silverware. Brian went outside and lefta thousand doodles he drew, every happy animalthat wasn't him. We crumpled them like origami roadkill. Stomped them under our feet untilthey became wine between our toes.We're still drinking it now, ten years later. I don't know howmagnets work. If I tied a million together, could theypull him here? The cutlery turned ash in his pockets.That heavy metal in his blood.
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- March 2, 2024
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“My Brother Stole Every Spoon in the House” from ANOTHER LAST CALL: POEMS ON ADDICTION & DELIVERANCE: edited by Kaveh Akbar & Paige Lewis.
Published by Sarabande Books on October 24, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Steven Espada Dawson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Steven Espada Dawson is from East Los Angeles. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he is a former Ruth Lilly Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow. He has served as a poetry editor for Copper Nickel and Sycamore Review and has taught creative writing at universities, libraries, and prisons across the country. His work appears in Guernica, Gulf Coast, and Kenyon Review. His poems have been anthologized in Best New Poets, Pushcart Prize, and Sarabande’s Another Last Call. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as Poet Laureate.
Louisville, Kentucky
“Why do I feel so at home among the poems and poets of Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction & Deliverance? There is nothing more human, haunted, humbling, and bottom line, than the desire that fuels addiction and recovery—and poetry. In reading this brilliant anthology, I feel less alone. I’ve found my people.”
—Diane Seuss
“That writer lore: that one needs alcohol, conscious-altering substances, narcotic meandering—to be one of the greats—still reigns strong. But the discovery that there were great writers in recovery brought me over, as Sharon Olds writes here, to ‘the side of life,’ where I could become and become closer to myself. This anthology celebrates the true spiritual work that writing demands and sobriety gifts.”
—Joy Priest
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