Deborah Brown

poet, translator, and editor; her first book, Walking the Dog’s Shadow (BOA, 2009), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize from BOA Editions and a New Hampshire Literary Award; leads poetry workshops that welcome new and published poets

What I Know about the Night Sky

The new moon is never visible
on the night of the New Moon,
though when the sky is darkest
you sometimes see fireballs flash,
and through the night,
newly-bare branches reach towards the sky
while my brother has electric shock therapy,
convulsions he won’t remember. They cut
some connections in the brain,
the ones that fine-tune grief.

While I pace, I look for Andromeda,
so many light years away that the rays
I see tonight were emitted
when wooly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers
roamed here. The next day my brother
reaches out to me from the darkness
he’s wrapped in. He tests the light.

from The Human Half by Deborah Brown (BOA Editions, Ltd.)