Scar 22 — Blackbird Archive

← v19n2, Fall 2020

The tender regions of the brain are sheltered

in the numb. It keeps them tender, safe,

like the windows of a house in the woods

in a purity of night apart from the others.

I had a friend whose mother ended it all

on his small bed when he was off at school.

Then he slept on it for weeks. Imagine.

He was good enough to me, I guess,

but aloof from his lovers. His mother slept

among them all. It made him special,

to speak with such odd calm about pain

as someone well acquainted with his subject.

If he cried, he did not recall. If a smell

troubled his sleep, sleep alone would know.

grief family mortality

Bruce Bond

Bruce Bond is the author of three forthcoming books: Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods (Elixir Press), which won the 17th Annual Elixir Book Prize, Frankenstein’s Children (Lost Horse Press), and Dear Reader (Free Verse Editions). He is the author of eighteen published books including Sacrum (Four Way Books, 2017); Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997–2015 (Louisiana State University, 2017), which won the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award; Black Anthem (University of Tampa Press, 2016), which won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry; Gold Bee (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), which won the Helen C. Smith and Crab Orchard Awards; and Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press, 2015). He is Regents Professor of English at University of North Texas.