nothing like storybooks, no, closer to sleepwalking through an

infinite stream of repetitious, connivant videoclips day to week

to month, as does Matías, who since the crash routinely rides

past our old adobe flat on a sturdy Azteca I bequeathed him for

graduation, majestic, walk-trotting to Desert Home of Peace for

another heart-to-heart. It’s the white horse that enchants, and my

brother’s tears trailing, while I linger behind tombstones or trees,

seeing him double as man and child, my voice caught in this im-

passable veil, rippling air, but he can hear only breeze, see only

beneath, me dwelling between, too low to catch a passing cloud.

He believes talking to the dead can matter, like in flicks where

the dead come home, from It’s a Wonderful Life to Poltergeist,

though for the love or doubt of all that is holy, what’s a death

but a movie about tiny films some version of your self is busy

re-viewing in the warm, cloaking dark of a weathertight room.

---

Michael Dwayne Smith haunts many literary houses, including Bending Genres, The Cortland Review, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Heavy Feather Review, Monkeybicycle, and Chiron Review. Author of four books, recipient of the Hinderaker Poetry Prize, the Polonsky Prize for fiction, and multiple Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net nominations, he lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family and rescued horses.