Girl Jamie lingers outside Lil Jamie’s welding shop.
She watches the arc and marvels at her brother’s ability
to control starlight, to make it destroy or create
with the steady tides of his arm.
In this moment, he is a titan, a god, an outer space being
with infinitely more reason for being
than any mere earth-bound mortal.
Then, he raises his helmet and is only slightly more human.
His tosses her a warm beer
and they sit quietly on bucket seats pulled years ago
from a broken down Ford.
When the bubbles get the better of them,
Jamie and Jamie take turns belching out their names—
a weird chorus of pride, guilt, and shame
rolled into the repetition of those two rumbling syllables.
Girl Jamie starts to go,
but Lil Jamie hugs her tight. She inhales the beer,
the burned sulfur metal, and the man smell of his chest
while the blood within them calls to each other—
two planets circling a black hole.