The Eyes of Big Brother
- for Arlie Anthony Whitt (1949-1967)
I
I never knew him. He died at eighteen,
Three years before I was born.
I am here, and named, for him.
I know him from a single picture,
The photo taken his senior year,
The eyes of soft gun-metal blue
His father gave to him --
The color only, softness from someone else --
Always staring out at me as I stared back.
And then, of course, from the mirror,
Or so they'd say.
II
'You look just like him,' they'd always say -- but how
Could anyone put us side by side
As they did with my picture every year
In the other side of the two-side picturebook frame,
And say I was his brother?
I've tried to find the beauty of a scar,
Some simple blemish on that airbrushed skin --
Only then could I truly look like him.
But I looked in vain.
They airbrushed the picture, my mother said,
As they used to do when the photo was 'important.'
What was so important that you'd want to cover it?
I always wanted to ask, and what
Would they want to hide from me, who mirrors him?
I looked in yearbooks to find what I sought
And there I'd see him standing with Gail,
Or sitting with Gail, his girlfriend,
Or fiancee, depending on the year.
I've seen her since, and she's seen me.
We frighten each other terribly.
III
Did he ever write her line after stumbling line,
Telling her how fine and beautiful she was to him,
As I've often done with my lovers when I felt the need?
My father loved him, and so I doubt
He ever did such parentally paining things.
We would fight, he and I, after
Dad and I were done. He'd watch
Me from the closet at the foot of the bed
Where there was no light and I couldn't see his face.
'Why can't I be like you?' I'd shout.
'Why can't I be like you and be loved, too?'
But all I'd hear is silent laughter.
You're not like me, he'd whisper
In a voice that was never mine.
You're Tony, he'd say, I'm Tony,
And I'm dead.
It's so much easier to love the dead.
IV
When told I was gay, my mother said,
'God told us he send us a son
Just like the one we lost,
So Arlie must've been the same way.'
Nothing could convince her otherwise,
And that whole summer, she wondered what she had done,
And whom he'd done.
My father retreated to his Holy Book
And would not say a word,
But the way that his hands shook told me
He wondered, too.
V
The day the frame that held our pictures
Crashed to the floor, the glass across my face
Shattering the way his skull once did,
I waited out the summer worriedly.
I'd turned eighteen.
But unlike him, at age eighteen,
I never took a job at a gas station,
Fresh out of school, as he had done.
I had no friends who would smash my face
For rumors I was hitting on their girls.
I'd never be punched and knocked to the pavement,
Never be knocked to the ground and jarred to sleep.
I'd never do that to myself.
I didn't try quite hard enough, I guess.
� 2002 Tony Whitt
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