Devon Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Pat O’Brien

I am trying to remember blackberries on my tongue, and my mother ’ s rolling pin flattening out the oily dough for pies, and didn ’t dad lay the slate porch we etched in chalk, and didn ’t we nap on the hot slate until our eyelids glowed orange, and how many times did the woods drip secrets, and how many steps were there to sock island where silver minnows darted back and forth like underwater flags rippling, and wasn ’t it below the abandoned railroad tracks where we dug in clay mines to shape ashtrays, and what it was like to win that crab-apple fight with the Rockwood gang. I know there was always wonder, and when the sky streaked pink under a pulling moon, weren ’t our mothers always calling us home.

Pat O’Brien teaches Creative Writing at Penn State Brandywine. Her poems have appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Mad Poets Review, and Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts. She lives in West Chester with her husband and two daughters.

pen. The laughter and music for sighs. He sheared his long hair and brushed it down smooth, and deep in his head a little seed sprouted.

My mother is too pragmatic to help.

“He should just fix it, ” she says. She is sitting in an armchair in soft lamplight, knitting methodically. (Is she entangling herself in that web of yarn? Is it a cocoon? There are so many strings. How does she keep track of them all?). She takes a sip of tea.

“I mean really. It’ s not a disease. It’ s all just a mental thing. ”

She means well, she really does. She loves him for who he is, she really does. She just doesn ’t know what to do, and she comes off as callous and insensitive.

“Why can ’t he just go get some friends instead of paying a shrink to talk with? I don ’t have a shrink, and I’ m perfectly fine. ”

I am too much of a teenager to help him.

“Jay-Bo-Bay, Jay-Bo-Bay ” he says in the morning, smiling wearily. He reaches out to tickle me. All I have to do is say Hey, Daddy, Howareyouthismorning?, and sit down beside him. But I can ’t.

“Not right now, ” I growl. “I’ m not in the mood. Are you done with the bathroom?” (I wish I had been nicer as soon as the words leave my mouth)

“Yeah, it’ s yours, ” he mumbles, and shuffles back to his dark room.

I don ’t help, I don ’t help, I don ’t help. I could help. Could I help? Can I help?

I’ m pretty sure that I can ’t help. It’ s up to him. Or perhaps it’ s up to some god to chip away the concrete blocks around his feet and the lead around his eyes—up to some hammer-wielding Thor or some squat Buddha scurrying around with a sharpened chisel in hand.

But maybe it can ’t be helped at all and he ’ll forever walk in place in a muddy rut on the side of the road, gradually sinking deeper and deeper. Perhaps he ’ll be sucked underground and only a patch of neatly-brushed hair will peek out. I think he wouldn ’t even mind much. I think.

At two or three a.m., when most employed adults in their right minds are sleeping, my father sits sunken into the couch, letting the flickering blue lights of late-night television wash over him. His salt-and-pepper hair runs laterally in uniformed waves. He blinks from time to time.

He isn ’t watching the screen; rather, he ’ s looking past the TV set, either silently grieving over his past, or inventing a bleak, bleak future for himself and staring coldly at it. There has never been a face so wholly empty.

Off goes the TV at some ridiculous hour. He rocks to his feet and trudges upstairs, the hardwood steps creaking as he goes.

He forgets to set the coffee.

Jay Pabarue, a Philadelphia resident, and high school student, dabbles in both poetry and creative nonfiction. While walking down the street with his hands in his pockets, he either hums or does not. This is his first print publication.

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