INCANTATION TO PROTECT YOUR BROTHER'S YOUNGEST SON​

by connie wasem scott

 

 

 

1. Rip your sunglasses off your face and fling them

       out the speeding car window. Let them be pulverized

       a hundred times an hour for being useless.

 

 

    2. Collect a thumb-sized bottle of pool water where he

        taught his firstborn to dive off his shoulders head first.

        Sprinkle a few drops on the boy’s frosted flakes.

 

 

     3. His name will draw shadows across the boy’s face like drapes.

         Give him cloven leaves of creosote that smell like rain.

         Bring sunlight and rough muffins to dunk in his milk.

 

 

    4. Keep your blue hospital scrubs. Stuff the legs with bags

        of the hope you’ve collected. Stitch them into two teddy bears.

        Draw a smile on each one.

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Connie Wasem Scott lives in Spokane, WA, where she teaches a range of English classes at Spokane Falls Community College and enjoys the great outdoors with her Aussie-American husband. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in CITRON, Shore Poetry, Streetlight, Minerva Rising, Cathexis Northwest, and elsewhere.