Poem: Closet

Another poem published by Wilderness House Literary Review. This poem concerns my brother, who was born on December 9, 1969 and died on February 5, 2000.

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Closet

in the dark the shirts
in the closet are ghosts,
suicides that hung themselves
that way. faint
moonlight dredges up
a slump of someone’s collar.
the boy on the bed
wants to go inside, stick his head in--
to try on every limp body,
find out every why
from these skeletons
that hang on hooks
shaped like the letter Y.

he wants to be in the middle.
wrapped up, strangled, hugged.
he wants all these bodies
to be fabrics of snatching web.
and as he struggles
he beholds the intri-
cacy of the monster,
its cheekless face,
how it torments in echoes,
reminds him of love
that died mangled in its beak.

somehow, fitting into
the agony of all his fears,
he must go down.