Alive
by Tony Abbott
Richard.
Richard.
Richard.
The catbirds sang your name this morning.
Who had noticed this before, how they must have heard
our mother calling you and remembered your name
ten years after she left, fifteen after you? But that’s nature—
a world of omens and signs and blossoming magic,
snapping the senses to attention.
Did you leave all that
to them when you died, the innumerable armies
on earth’s payroll, those angels humming over our heads?
Do you join them in the air of my backyard?
Are you saying Brother, I’m here?
Or, as Richard, Richard crows out again and again,
is this some private conversation between the two of you?
Are you all angels now,
and are we excluded, being earthbound and only alive?
Again
by Tony Abbott
Tossing babies from walls isn’t “just a thing
everyone does.” It isn’t the “natural consequence
of a brutal era.” Break it down. Something must have
impelled your fingers to wrench my son
from his mother’s arms, to dangle him like a sack
over the windy rampart. Did no single muscle
rebel? Did the whole thing just feel right?
But look, no one else swung him by the ankle,
only you, Neoptolemos. No god forced your hand,
not this time. You controlled the episode. You chased
my wife along our wall, you kicked her down, you plucked
away our child. Your body acted by your will alone.
But let us say it was the chaos of the moment.
The moment itself drove you mad to tear the boy
from his mother and shake him with fury: “I have him!
Hector’s son!” Fine, but even then. The damnable choice
came when you didn’t return him to his mother’s breast
but chose—yes, chose, like men who rape—to hurl
the boy into the air beyond the rampart.
Knowing his death would be hideous. Knowing you would
cut his mother and me deeper than any wound.
And did you have the stomach to watch his tender
flailing body strike and splatter the bloody dust
of our plain? Did you? Ha, no. Coward, coward, coward,
protect yourself, for when you die, you’ll die again
at my hands, for I will find the highest wall
in this hell of walls and throw you off again again again again.
About the Author
After beginning his career in poetry, for the last three decades Tony Abbott wrote for younger readers, his latest being the young adult novel-in-verse, Junk Boy (2020). He has taught graduate-level creating writing and has returned to writing poetry for adults. Recent pieces appear in Madrigal Magazine, Dreich Magazine, The New Ulster, and The Galway Review. www.tonyabbottbooks.com.