Anthony Frame

Why write a poem in an epistolary form? I was having one of those nights where, to paraphrase Kurt Cobain, I was so tired I couldn't sleep. So I decided to use this latest bout of insomnia to finish final revisions and edits on the first rough draft of my first book of poems. When that was finished, since I was still hours from being able to sleep (despite two or three shots of NyQuil), I figured I'd send an email to my brother, a thank you note for being my first reader way back when I was young and writing silly Marvel comic fan-fiction. But I knew better than to send it. Instead, I used it for lines, images and ideas and a year or so later had this poem. And some of this story is true and some of it is a lie. It's definitely true that I'm interested in what happens to a poem when we call it a letter. It's far more true that I'm interested in what happens to a letter when we call it a poem.

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Late Night Email to My Brother


Nick − got time to chat? How are the girls?

I miss our bunk beds − I’m listening to The Smashing Pumpkins, remembering our little-boy shoes. Sleep was easier in our room with green walls. Your snores above me.

I’ve finished my book. And taken a shot of NyQuil − Nick, I need to sleep but first I want to know you’re out there.

Remember when we were young, making sports banners on the old computer − the Commodore 64 − selling them for fifty cents apiece? A Lions fan, you refused our only sale, a “Go Packers” banner. I pocketed both quarters.

You hate politics − but how will your daughters only know 9/11 from textbooks? Will you at least tell them you were there, blocks away from the D.C. crash, evacuated from the Naval Research Lab, your top secret statistical data under your arms − that mom tried calling you until her fingers callused − that I finally called her? Nick, tell them − I can’t keep all our stories.

You should stop by, see the new house. I think my poems are seeping into the carpet − no stain guard.

Vonnegut said to write for one person − Nick, will you read my book? No one else will see, but you’re on every page.

These nights I can’t sleep, I remember our bedroom. Dad kissing us goodnight on the lips − reading us Black Beauty without a care. His lips looked so blue and so cracked − his mustache damp with sweat − I feared he was dying every night. And once he finished reading, you climbed to the top bunk in your boxers.

No more sad statistics. Today, one of my friends said gays should look at snakes − just shed your skin. Nick, when did we choose to be straight?

Screw it. I’ll never sleep tonight − I’m attaching the book. I’m nervous − will you believe my eyes? You’ve never seen me this naked before.

 

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Anthony Frame is an exterminator who lives in Toledo, Ohio with his wife. His first chapbook, Paper Guillotines, was published by Imaginary Friend Press and recent poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Harpur Palate, Blood Orange Review, Third Coast, The Meadowland Review, Pirene’s Fountain and Bigger Than They Appear: An Anthology of Very Short Poems (Accents Publishing 2011), among others. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Learn more at http://www.anthony-frame.com/.