The Indisputable
FOR BRAD McGARRY
BELLAIRE, OHIO
Inside the house, above the basement
where D.J. bloodies Brad, there is
a white bowl of lemons sick with desire.
Watching this movie based loosely
on his life, I have to start there: sunlight
jeweling the canary fruit. Then, the afternoon
jeweling: an argument over a weed-eater.
Then, one man loving the other. And the other
staging a robbery of the house, chaotic as a negative
scratched to hell with a paperclip.
Across the state, four years earlier
& hours away, I lie
awake again on my grandfather’s daybed.
I wait to jewel in the sun, scrolling through
neat rows of men on an app, notifications
quiet, scrolling
through whole fields of men. The same way
years earlier, I believed
god scrolled through boys wherever I slept
to choose which ones won’t walk home
from the next moon-stained pickup. The next
sunless barn, the next cherry-stained confessional.
After he’s shot Brad, D.J. drives
to the closest lake, scalps
the gun post-dusk. I never knew
Brad & now I never will, but I know this:
some houses
close their mouths while boys are still
on their tongues. I watch D.J. pick up his wife
then his daughter, then call the police.
His wife thumbs the god around her neck. He was
like a brother, D.J. says. Robbery. Below
the waterline, his daughter sits, obedient
in the front stoop of sunlight. A group of women
pool reward money while stapling Brad’s face
to the birches. At dawn, god jams the sun back
into its socket, pops a pill, then falls asleep.