A loose flap of skin passes just below his eye. Bruises ride the bridge of my nose. The dark ropes of handprints grip both our necks. Our fresh buzz-cuts lumpy with goose eggs. It's easy to forget we were trying to kill each other. Or at least I was. But what I wonder now is why our father shot the photo before he bandaged the hole where the nail went in, stuffed my raw mouth with gauze. We stand side by side against the garage, eyes focused just beyond the lens, each pointing at what we did to the other.
169 The Paris-American
Anders Carlson-Wee was a professional rollerblader
before he studied wilderness survival and started hopping freight trains to see
the country. He is the winner of Ninth Letter's 2014 Poetry Award, New
Delta Review's 2014 Editors' Choice Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg
Poetry Prize, and is a two-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize. His work has
appeared in Linebreak, Ninth Letter online, New Delta Review,
The Pinch, Best New Poets 2012, and is forthcoming in Ninth
Letter and Best New Poets 2014. The recipient of scholarships from
the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Anders
is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Vanderbilt University.