Two Brothers on 35th Street
The barber's clippers completed a pirouetteAnd left a trail in Big Brother's fine hair
Resting like soft breaths on his head
Freshly greased to be sweet as sun kisses
His hair cut as precisely as
His lackadaisical laces lacing through his high tops
As exact as the puff & swell of
His black & white plaid shirt
Hanging mid-thigh
A shirttail catches Chicago's March wind
He shivers, while
Baby Brother hovers like a satellite
Baby is a little darker in his black down-filled jacket
Even though he's five
His knit cap blares out
With the curvy, capital W in yellow on his forehead
He could step to the mic
Posture each word like lunging
Kung fu kicks
Flying during Saturday matinees
Baby Brother grins
Showing each square tooth
With a space in between.
Baby Brother turns away
As if he's playing hard to get.
He laughs when Big Brother asks
Gotta boyfriend
Both of them stand in Comiskey Park's shadow
Big Brother bounces to keep warm
And a young girl could smell
Weekends of hard kisses
Nervous touches & cocoa butter
Baby Brother coyly covers
Half his Cherry Now & Later mouth
With one tiny palm
Sayin What's Up? to a female timber song
He ain't in school! He don't go to no Julian!
A woman tells him to tell his Big Brother to stay in school
Like the sisters
Leaving him a heap of sepia butterflies
Dripping deliberate dew sweat
Dropping like ice cubes out of trays
Steel heated into malleable liquid
Big Brother & Baby Brother
Become black silk and amber velvet
Under weight of woman smile
- Tara Betts, copyright 1999