Grand Prize Winner, Sidney Lanier Poetry Prize, April 2011
Sunset sips away its light from Gunderland Park,
while the lynx-eyed blond girl in drill-bit curls
waits to see which goose-pimpled one of us
has the mustard to hurl himself off the cliff
into the shallow river already pocked with stars.
My little brother licks lips the cold color of slate,
smirks at us, then steps off into a stomach-lifting leap;
we watch the daredevil fall,
the runt with sauce enough to affront gravity
and hold his territory with older boys.
Two years later in our ranch town where folks
don’t roll up truck windows or bother about keys,
my brother and two cowboy friends borrow an empty pickup
and pull over when a blue light revolves in their rearview mirror.
Judge says prison or military, your choice.
His out-of-town girlfriend watches
from a straight-backed chair in a veteran’s hospital,
as once again the younger brother leads the older,
as in failing light, he steps off another cliff
and falls weightless into a river of unknown depth.