The Boy

My older brother is walking down the sidewalk into the suburban

summer night:

white T-shirt, blue jeans— to the field at the end of the street.

Hangers Hideout the boys called it, an undeveloped plot, a pit

overgrown

with weeds, some old furniture thrown down there,

and some metal hangers clinking in the trees like wind chimes.

He’s running away from home because our father wants to cut his hair.

And in two more days our father will convince me to go to him— you know

where he is— and talk to him: No reprisals. He promised. A small parade

of kids

in feet pajamas will accompany me, their voices like the first peepers

in spring.

And my brother will walk ahead of us home, and my father

will shave his head bald, and my brother will not speak to anyone the next

month, not a word, not  pass the milk , nothing.

What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk

down a sidewalk without looking back.

I was the girl. What happened taught me to follow him, whoever he was,

calling and calling his name.

MARGINALIA

Writing poems about my grandfather. My heart still breaks a little each time.

KEEP READING

SHARED WITH GRATITUDE

This poem appeared in    What the Living Do  by Marie Howe  , published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. (Available on:  Amazon  •  Bookshop )

DESCRIPTION

“Informed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive.   What the Living Do   reflects “a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such as Sharon Olds and Jane Kenyon. Unlike the earlier confessional poetry of Plath, Lowell, Sexton et al., Howe’s writing is not so much a moan or a shriek as a song. It is a genuinely feminine form . . . a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation” (  Boston Globe  ).” ( Source )

ABOUT MARIE HOWE

Marie Howe was born in 1950 in Rochester, New York. She worked as a newspaper reporter and teacher before receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1983. Howe is the author of    New and Selected Poems    (W. W. Norton, 2024), winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry;    Magdalene    (W. W. Norton, 2017), which was long-listed for the National Book Award;    The Kingdom of Ordinary Time    (W. W. Norton, 2009), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize;    What the Living Do    (W. W. …  (more)

Marie Howe was born in 1950 in Rochester, New York. She worked as a newspaper reporter and teacher before receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1983. Howe is the author of    New and Selected Poems    (W. W. Norton, 2024), winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry;    Magdalene    (W. W. Norton, 2017), which was long-listed for the National Book Award;    The Kingdom of Ordinary Time    (W. W. Norton, 2009), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize;    What the Living Do    (W. W. Norton, 1998); and    The Good Thief    (Persea Books, 1988), which was selected for the 1987 National Poetry Series. ( Source )

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ENDNOTES

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