2, Julia Broeker

 

His parents hold him over

            his brother’s grave, explain how

he is his brother born

again. It is the miracle

            of rebirth, renaming, reclamation.

The day of his birth the mother is taken

in distress, gazing at her newborn

            child. The mother

has named the son in the guise

of love, chosen to think of both sons, living

            and dead in a single invocation:

Salvador. And in his portrait

Dalí has rendered his brother

            a specter. Detailed in a cascade

of cherries, the dead Salvador is framed

as a sum of parts, composite of molecules

            spelled out by light. In the mirage

the face emerges, beautiful

and threatening. In the right

            corner of the piece

he bears the weight

of his name. Each day,

            I sound out my name,

its interplay of letters, searching

between knowledge and grief,

            for some inheritance—

perhaps to carry, like the nameless mother

some quotient of the dead.