First-Place Winner: Building a Brace by Joe Cottonwood
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by Joe Cottonwood
I’m a carpenter. There’s a mindfulness of craft—of
any manual labor, actually—if you open yourself to it.
I
am building a brace for the front porch
of
my brother who is on the other side
of
that door listening with headphones
to
a recording of Chinese poetry
(in Mandarin, which he understands)
(in Mandarin, which he understands)
while
he is dying, slowly,
brain
cell by brilliant brain cell
in
that rocking chair
whose
joints are creaking,
coming
undone.
He
no longer remembers his phone number
or
how to count change at the grocery store.
He
is in denial of any problem
but
the crack in the porch grows wider
millimeter
by millimeter
so
out here in the rain
I
set four-by-fours upright as posts,
then
I jerk four-by-eights as beams
lifting on my shoulder
held by my hands transferred through my spine
pushing with my legs
anchored by my feet
as
the useless joists of the deck
drop
termite shit onto my eyebrows
like
taunts of children:
nya
nya you can’t fix this.
But
I can brace it for a while.
Long
enough, at least
for
my brother to forget ten languages.
I
will repair that rocking chair.
I
will change his sheets,
install
grab bars in the shower
because
he’s my brother.
I
won’t let his porch collapse
out
here in the rain.
I
simply won’t.
Holding a baby is a window to
meditation.
