Sunday after late-night hockey bliss, I drive in my old beater past little brother drunk on the winter streets in his bare feet with a strip of carpet wrapped around his ears. I park and follow and find him hunkering under the expressway viaduct clacking his teeth at that black butterfly that keeps reproducing inside his chest. He's above that river of metallic fish that swish and wheel past. He's telling the river, maybe this time he'll spread his arms like one of those butterflies and leap.
     We drive home and I ease back in the television's hum trying not to knot up into a fist, but lay my body out, palm it out for him to touch. Only he gets too close with his knives in his beard and yellow teeth, and knuckle rubs my cheek. I foot piston pump him back and he crashes into our father's trophy case--night night little brother, rock-a-bye that John Elway football encased in glass, and head noggin against the wall. Why'd he make me do that to my little brother?
     I'm backpedaling my mouth from his rising up snarling, all veins in his neck and fangs and breath. I'm trying to kiss my little brother with my open hands. Kiss the gallows in his face melting down around his cheekbones, melting down into a hideous mask. Youngest little brother they think is oldest brother in the kitchen now tossing whiskey bottles down the basement staircase.
     Bedtime now, I drop my arms when he sidles up and grabs my face with both hands. I take his whiskery kiss and climb the steps and say goodnight. I rock my lantern back and hide my own bottle under my bed, a horrible boat marooned on its side. I press my ear against the mattress listening for down-below brother, while my bottle keeps whispering, crawl out from under the covers, crawl on out and give me a kiss.
     My brother rockets off in a customer's car with his three DWIs in hand. He might be out there killing someone or dying, but God forgive me I give in to the whisper, swing my arm underwater, lift that boat to my mouth and drink. I rise to plant my bare feet in the mud beside my bed and sit in the sidelong haze of that streetlight sizzling like an olive in a Martini glass. I lean on the wall near the window and face the concrete, breathe through my own skin crossing the earth blowing back gum wrappers and whistling inside all those bottlenecks trying to find little brother. I'm trying to find that boy gone man gone dark, peel him down to the skin in those boy pictures, that skin so bright and clean back then.
     Next day through the papery walls that cry like some wolf being ripped in half is little brother. Alive, he's alive, I think, then plant my feet in the mud beside my bed and rise up. Again that cry from the room where father and I pour whiskey bottles onto the floor an inch away from my brother's outstretched tongue. That cry from the rock bottom-room little brother swaddles up in his arms like some tarry treasure and he hauls it wherever he goes.

You should find Rybicki; he preaches on street corners all over the world. Drop a crumb of bread into his cup. Rip a page of your own song out of your pocket and knock him off that milk crate he's standing on. If someone nearby is smacking dice against the curb, rattle and then sprinkle a handful of glass across the street. Tell them all it's some lost language. Use the streetlight if you have to, some interrogation lamp, so long as it shines.

 John

 Rybicki