Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry: A Boy’s Memory
In response to Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Song” 

Listen: I can’t get your name
out of my head—a gentle stroking,
the rhythm of a girl’s fingers in my hair.
The hair was matted with blood. 

That morning, all I wanted: one berry
ripe in the middle of the bush
uneaten by birds—a thorn broke.
A prick of blood under my nail. 

Who sings the song? 

I hear it at night. A broken thorn
stuck in a tangle of girl’s hair, in a mat
of animal fur, lying in the dirt
under a songbird’s small talon. 

Blackberries aren’t usually sweet.
Only when they’re overripe, when the sun
softens them to premature jam—
then they are worth eating. 

Listen: I don’t know who keeps the music
going. Same tune every night—a bird
with a thorn in its foot, something sweet.
Does that even happen? 

I can’t tell you anything you don’t
already know. An animal was in the yard.
It wouldn’t stop bleating.
I wanted to hold the quiet sky in my arms, 

but it was far, and the clamor of feet,
of knife-on-fur, of hard breath
made me forget the sky for a while.
The knife was sticky, slick, 

dripping thick as if with jam.
I wanted one of the other jobs:
to hold the animal’s feet so it wouldn’t kick
or its mouth so it wouldn’t bleat 

but they whispered my name and clapped
my back. When I got home, my shirt
was dotted in rusty fingerprints and streaks.
I buried it under my mother’s rosebush. 

Listen: when the night began, I was alone.
And when I went to bed, alone again.
And in school all the next day
and the day after that, I spoke less to the others 

but never stopped. When the night began,
I was whistling. The first star came out and winked
to the tune of my song. There was a bird at dusk.
We had a call-and-response. I don’t know why 

we did it. I kicked a stone at the goat-post, said
I wish it would stop. I didn’t say
Get me a knife. But they did
that night, and every night after on repeat. 

One boy’s smirk. My small nod. Somewhere
my bird’s whistle too soft to hear.
And here’s the worst part: I’ve done it
over and again. Just yesterday I brought a hen out. 

She’d stopped laying, and I taught my boy.
He drew the knife. I held her wings.
We didn’t even need the meat.
Just wanted more space in the coop. 

Sometimes the song sounds like the goat
and sometimes it sounds like the girl
and sometimes, now, it sounds like a hen
squawking or field of cicadas gone 

quiet under a crop-duster’s spray. Tonight, it sounds
like my son—the way he hummed while he worked
and screamed when the blood hit his pant-leg.
I almost taught him to enjoy it.