Fugue

Brendan Payraudeau

My brother tells me he’s quitting weed
because he dreams of our father
almost every night now.

The one with the man in the washing machine,
in France, constipated and spiraling,
talking to the glass.

Then there’s the one with the deer.
Sometimes he’s driving
and Papa is already in the passenger’s seat—

they don’t talk. Then it gets worse, they do.
I tell him to write it down.
He says, No offense, but I’m not you.

I remind him of spider eggs in our garage,
the bats having babies
behind the basketball hoop,

how he shattered the glass
kicking off Mom’s boots,
the rides I gave him after the arrest.

He laughed, said it never happened that way.

We agree on almost nothing
except that we got out lucky
and even that’s a kind of lie.

He says he wants his body back.
Then cracks another beer,
tells me the deer in the dream

lets Papa pet it
which scares him more
than if it ran

Brendan Payraudeau is a poet and special education teacher based in Summit, New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rust & Moth and is forthcoming in The Shore and Frontier Poetry. When not writing, he is cultivating an interest in reptile husbandry and whittling.