Beside the driveway to the mental home where
they’ve got my brother,
keen purposeful faces truant from their
afflictions bow down
as if fallen from a height,
hands in earth like seeds
misstrewn, I would say,
but for him, but for myself.

Cut grass and rectangular flower beds,
red tulips in a row— 
would-be hosannas that plead
for salvation instead.
They’re streaked orange, yellow and purple,
bend long stems like bows.
“Parrot tulips,” mother says.
“There’s virus in the bulbs.”

We look up and you’re there,
unattended, a good sign, we think,
until we catch your frantic stare
and hear that it’s the wrong day,
that we’re fugitives
lest they take you away
again.

Tell me is it like a fever
those voices no one else hears?
Is it some twisted shade
that makes you a believer?
Suddenly when you speak, and after years
I remember the dream
that mysteriously bound us together.

Now I only wonder what they’ve got you on,
your motions slow, your speech
forced up slurred from some well.
We’re in separate hells.

Spirited to the crafts building
behind the maintenance shed,
we stand like spies before the window
to view the art show.
There in black and white and red
your pottery shines like a vision,
perfect as a wing.

And like museum goers
we stare and stare.





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Mark Dunbar lives outside Chicago. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Corvus Review, Bicoastal Review and the Ekphrastic Review, among others. He attended Kenyon College where he was the recipient of the American Academy of Poets Award.