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You are here: Home / 47 / My Brother Calls

My Brother Calls

47, Poetry by Maari Carter

to let me know Sonic
is including gravy 
in their chicken strips dinner again.

He asks when I’m coming home 
for Thanksgiving. We don’t

speak often. Having not been raised 
in the same house, little has passed
between us— no shared night-lights,
no hand-me-downs to complain 
about. And what there is

is mostly injury. One story, 
he brings up again and again, 
from back when Mama 
and Johnny were still running 
the Legion Lake Skating Rink. 

To hear him tell it,
I shoved him into the metal guard rail, 
hard enough that he broke his arm. 
I barely remember it.

But omission is a kind
of flattery, and it wouldn’t be the first time 
I’ve struck my cruelty from the record. 

And, sure, I bet he wishes I couldn’t forget
throwing my weight behind 
that hurt, the squeal of the skaters’ toe stops 
as the whole place came to a halt.
But the fact is, 

I knew how to draw a house 
before he was born.


Maari Carter is originally from Winona, MS. Her work has appeared in such places as The Laurel Review, Meridian, and Sundog Lit, among others.

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Call for Submissions: Special Issue on Iran

Call for submissions by Iranian women (trans & non-binary inclusive) writers. Learn more and submit your work here.

New Orleans Review is delighted to announce the publication of its first book, Interviews from the Edge: 50 Years of Conversations about Writing and Resistance
(Bloomsbury 2019).

Visit the Digital Archive of NOR Print Issues, 1968-2019

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