O Brother
by and published in Edition Ten of Pomegranate
He’s wearing a bracelet of dried blood,
This limp body;
I cradle his head,
Press him against my bare chest.
The cedars are still swaying with the hot wind of the bomb,
The apartment block
(the smell of Gori the cat,
The picture of Paris that never hung straight on the wall,
The rising damp behind the television)
Grows flames from its rooftiles like moss.
Brother, you are not like the mountains of twisted metal,
All bent in the same direction by the waft of kiln air
That washed away the afternoon,
And every afternoon after that.
Brother,
This blue and salmon-checked shirt is the shirt you died in.
Through the smoke,
I can still smell your hair.
I wail and croak; the gravel crunches beneath us like human teeth,
Biting the skin of my back.
Paul Cooper
Paul Cooper is a writer from Cardiff, currently studying in the University of Warwick and living in Leamington Spa. He is a poet and novelist, boxer and ukuleleist, and collects other people’s diaries. He has had various short stories and poems published in magazines, but has yet to publish any novels, the genius of which have gone unrecognised by publishers.