VARIATIONS OF A BROTHER WAR (HANDS TRIPTYCH)
j.a. tyler
To Make Cups
Gideon watches a heart inside of Eliza. They are not in a bed but on a cloud. The cloud they are on is a tree. And they are in the branches of this cloud-tree, a spinning sun around their heads. Eliza’s heart is an invisible machine inside of invisible skin, no need for latch and key when the whole body is itself unseen. And there is no damage when Gideon calls her name and they go up together into the tree-shaped clouds. Their hands are rivers, the opening of her heart is bark stripping, new cabins going up in valleys.
To Make Fists
Eliza has in her hand the wind that once stood over her mother, watching her give birth to dying. She has caught in her hair the fire of towns burning down. The smell on the air is sometimes smoke, like today, and sometimes apples bloomed open in trees, like tomorrow. The flowers arch in color. The river runs. Greener grasses bellow below her feet, Eliza, as she stands watching the world. She holds Gideon in one collarbone, Miller in the other. Access to her lungs is poetry, access to her heart is the seldom scent of strangled-free blossoms falling down.
To Make Gentleness
Miller can feel his brother’s tightened muscles on his open palm. When he closes his eyes, when he stokes the cabin’s fire, when he imagines living in a city as it burns to ghosts. Miller in the oak of their surround, standing straight while descending, rivers called Eliza, rivers called hearts, rivers named as testament to men and war and sunsets. Miller will continue to make his hand in the shape of Eliza’s hand, will continue walking her through the ferns of this valley, until she lays down under the sky, her body on his, and all is again unknowing
(La Petite Zine)
