The sack full of mirtazapine & bupropion makes
a maraca-rattle as I pull it from the trunk. For years,
this shared Rx palette brought comfort—no matter the miles,
at least we were close in meds. Today, my first morning without
having to remember. Thumbing through my brother’s
dog-eared Whitman, the pressed maple leaves he left.
I dreamt of ghosts forcing sand down our throats.
I dreamt of horses cribbing last wills in their pens.
A small army of his so-called troubled students calls & shares
tales of his having caught them post-juvie, post-relapse—
one says, Everyone else saw me in jail or dead. Another tells me
this is his fourth mentor he’s watched leave; he fears
he can’t go on. I press my fingers where my ribs meet meat.
The paper lozenge melts atop my tongue.

The function of despair is to cease
the mind’s search—so says the podcast

I queue to quell the silence. All is always lost.
The mind seeks &, needing what it can’t clutch,

careens. I learn it works the same systems as
addiction, though grief’s more water for the parched

than liquor for the drunkard. Half my fellow sibling-suicide
survivors in the Zoom room mention recovery, though

none will say from what. These meetings are brutal:
coughing spells, weird tears. The meaning of life is whatever

you’re doing that stops you from killing yourself—
so says Camus. The function of grief’s protest

is to hope. The function of despair is to learn
to breathe. Now do it with me. Breathe.

All the wives ward-wide lugged in their fake
plastic trees, wreathing the chapel in green needles.

They brought baskets of oranges, casseroles, cookies
& relief. Society is naught without its women,

nor its men who can be soft. My brother & I
grew up blessing hard-water sacrament, never having known

another kind. Free & reduced school lunches, salt
& pepper rice. Now brittle men with mealy mouths snap

& gut the checks that fed us. It’s said, I screamed
at God for the starving child till I saw the child

was God screaming at me. We sang hosanna, unaware
it meant trickle-downs & food stamps. I’m sorry, Mom & Dad—

I am giving up on screaming at God. I clasp my hands
& snarl at Heavenly Mother: Where the fuck art thou?

Jackson Burgess is the author of Atrophy (Write Bloody Publishing, 2018), winner of the 2017 Jack McCarthy Book Prize, and Pocket Full of Glass (Tebot Bach, 2017), winner of the 2014 Clockwise Chapbook Competition. The first-ever poetry/fiction dual-admit to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he’s placed poems and stories in Tin House, The Los Angeles Review, The Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the University of Iowa and the University of Southern California.