Philomath by Devon Walker-Figueroa

Author:Devon Walker-Figueroa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Drain

At seven, I learned the logic of cedars—

their relentless failure

to live, the frail

flame they leave for you

to cut down & to curse.

The locals called the new

condition rust. “It’ll open up

our view of Marys Peak,”

they said. My father blamed his blood

brother, brother

who’d bought up all

the land around our land,

who, as a boy, delighted

in harvesting

wings from flies. Funny

to think of a thing named

for what it cannot do. I’ve never spoken

to the man, though I know

he’s mastered

eleven tongues & runs a language

school near Okinawa. “Once,

he bragged about hiding

cameras in the showers

of that school,” my father

says in trying

moments, as I try to appear lost

in thought. I suspect

the blood brother can carry

a captivating conversation

in the language I am

trying to learn, language

of a branch that lets you

express the thought “I hear

heat” or “I taste

heat,” which makes “to feel”

end up feeling a touch

inadequate. “Blood is

thicker than water”

is a saying my mother

despised when she was

running our house like an inn

for the insane. She loved nearly

any animal that wasn’t

cut out for living—like

orphaned fawns & withdrawn

addicts she’d find

trembling at rest

stops along Route 20, like cedar

waxwings that mistook glass

for the space that lives

behind glass. Under the last

incense-cedar in the back

yard, we had a whole

boneyard of birds—

Toby, Thelma, Obadiah. We didn’t know

their sex. We didn’t know

why they camped all winter

long when they had bodies

that could carry them

some place warm & somehow full

of promise. Mti means

tree & mtu is person

in the tongue I try to hold

as if it were mine. In the tongue

I was born to, I was to be called

Forest, but then I wasn’t born

a boy & you can guess

the rest of the story. Everyone wanted

a brother for my sister.

I wanted a brother for all

of time, but my parents’

tepid tries ended

in prematurity & my mother

believed these losses due

to the blood brother standing

beside the driveway, cursing

her, screaming

whore every time she’d open

the gate. At the time,

I didn’t really know

what whore meant, nor

that it used to be a homophone

to hour, a fact not lost

on Elizabethans. Also not lost

on Elizabethans was the value of public

dissection, a theater

of which my father would be

fond. I say fond, given his love

of forensic science

shows, in which crimes get duly

accounted for while we feast

our eyes. “Do you see that?”

he once asked over dinner, pointing

his fork at the screen

over which flashed the image

of a lone limb (feminine,

etiolating on a Floridian

beach), “The hair keeps growing

after death!” My middle name is

Elizabeth, which means “My God

is an Oath.” So is my mother’s.

Was. So was her mother’s

mother’s & such is my book

of #s, so full of aimless begats.

According to Psalm 92,

the righteous shall flourish

like a cedar of Lebanon. I always

assumed the word

shall meant in my lifetime, that is,

when my life was a rehearsal

for eternity. The infected

fronds of a cedar smell

sweet when July touches

them, so sweet you swear

they can’t be dying now

or ever, though you know

their fall is ripening

underfoot. The root

—ake means both his & hers

in the language

I am trying to learn, meaning

perhaps an object is altered

little by the hand that holds

it, by the many aching parts

attached to the hand & to

its holding. The blood brother had

at

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