For my brother

I thought you were Mad Max;
you were so much taller than me,
so much better-looking, smoke
tucked behind your ear, Pink Floyd
blaring from your mouth, eyes
wincing with curated agony
when Roger Waters told you
to shine on. You Crazy Fuckin’ Diamond.

You shone too brightly,
bounced off the threshold
of our childhood home
on the way out, spit in the eye
of KGB-infused authority,
the plywood doorway shattering
like Russian-made cars.
Your mother let you leave.

I never wanted you to leave.
I never wanted the hole you left.
I never imagined the weight
of empty space, the dull quiet
of your cello shoved under my bed,
next to a leather bag you gave
ten-year-old me on my birthday,
full of hope & hypodermic needles.

There’s a dream where I awake
to the buzzing of the door downstairs.
Only I can hear it. Only I feel
your tar-stained fingers pressing
with machine gun rhythm the buzzer.
I stumble bleary-eyed into a revelry
of drunk uncles & fathers slapping
my boney back, brushing their mustaches,

& when I get to the wailing intercom
you spit words that tear my flesh
scoop my legs & hurry me down
forty two flights of stairs, the railing
made of rusted nails so I keep
my hands thrust deep in my pockets,
suck my snot back into my face
so that I seem nonchalant.

I see you standing in the lobby,
glass crunching under Doc Martens,
your dark associates glowering
from faceless skulls behind you.
A smile of sweet villainy adorns you.
A halo slips over your ankles
& you kick if off, not veering your gaze
from my brittle cheekbones.

The glass is a door—you love
to shatter doors, in my dreams,
in life, some metaphor for windows—
but you can’t step past the metal grate
so you beckon me close & whisper,
Get me The Map, Shura
& I know immediately what you mean.
How could you ask this of me?

The Map! The Map! The one father keeps
locked & hidden like a child in his desk.
A careful map, indexed, cross-referenced,
bound with crimson leather, the one
indulgence allowed in an otherwise
austere existence spent scraping pennies
from between couch cushions.
But The Map! The Map! No, I cannot.

The Map! Every time father gets in
his car he opens the map, though the route
is well-trod, dons his bifocals, points
his finger at the Cartesian coordinates
of his destination. Across the street,
down the hall, over three seas
and seven blasted countries,
through chipped-plaster ghettoes.

I cannot, but your smile implies bloodshed
so I do: I slink upstairs & drink tea
with pop, who sniffs for cigarette burns.
When he starts to sing brandy songs
I shuffle to his desk & pull the drawer
(it’s open, this is how I know it’s a dream
& not befuddled memory),
snatch the book & shove it in my pants.

A skip later later we board a Cessna
painted all-black; ash spews
from the sputtering engine & I notice
I am the only one without a chute.
I cannot ask you why: your face
has shot out your veins & your associates
mutter evil machinations:
You’ve already died. This, is echo.

It’s usually at this point I wake up.
Some of the time I plummet to the ground
& others I wait for you to push me
but there’s no use with interpretations.
My shrink shrugs & says,
Your guess is as good as mine.
My biggest regret is still the time
we lost when you scampered away,

That we never shared a joint
& talked about girls, about the girls
you brought home to our shared room,
about dilapidated factories, frozen rivers,
frozen memories, dusty photos of you
holding me as a baby, proud & boastful
of your little brother, not so little anymore.
I wish we’d looked at more maps together.