Brother

by Gayle Leyton

he is one of those people
who misses everything
follows behind someone else

a shrink told him
it was all my fault
I came first
and tied the world up
in neat little packages

Gayle Leyton is a native San Franciscan. Her work has been published in Salon, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Mercury News, and The Paterson Literary Review. She has worked as a high school English teacher, a law clerk, and a jewelry designer, but prefers to sit in the fog at the beach composing haikus.

poet's note
"Brother" is from my collection of poetry, Family Album, which is a tidy little book looking for a publisher. Though I haven't seen my sibling for 25 years, rumors confirm that the poem remains a reliable description of him.