The handyman opened a notch in the beam, drilled deep then backed off. “Not thick enough, a 2x6, sorry,” he said. We measured the other side; the kettle with its short cord had to reach far enough without its hot breath scalding the family photos. Then the handyman said he was sorry to hear about my mother. I told him, my mother and my father-in-law—in less than two months. “Really,” he said, hesitating, and then murmured, “My little brother, too.”

“Your brother,” I said. “Si illness?”

“No,” Edwin said, “he was murdered—only twenty and studying. He was carjacked in El Salvador, they found his body a week later.”

“Your brother, your brother,” I said, in a whisper over and over, our eyes moist. I put my arms around Edwin, my handyman, and he hugged back with one arm, the other hand white in the grit of drywall, while we both whispered to each other, “No hay palabras.” Then I handed him the spackle and tape, and he plugged up the hole.

Marcus Elman

is a yoga and fitness therapist working mostly with the elder-sage population in Southern California. He is curious about energy, how things work and get repaired, and the idea of redemption. His poem “The Boulevards of Los Angeles” received an honorable mention in Beyond Baroque’s 2017 annual poetry prize and was published in the textbook Method & Mystery: A Research-Based Guide to Teaching Poetry (The Poetry Salon, 2019). “The Crossing” was shortlisted for the Into The Void Poetry Prize 2020. His poems have been published in Cultural Daily [see links below], and in three volumes of Sunbeams: The Joan Ramseyer Memorial Poetry Anthology (2018, 2019, and 2020). He is a graduate of American River College, UC Davis, and Pepperdine.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Marcus Elman: Two Poems in Cultural Daily (5 January 2023): “The Prosciutto Ambulance” and “The Offering”

⚡ The Boulevards of Los Angeles in Cultural Daily (26 September 2018)