One of Dad’s many rules: always stand up for your brother. If this includes fists, so be it. Arguing with Dad is like questioning the Catholic priest: you simply don’t.

a failing of DNA

Two years younger, Abel is the tougher of us. A mean streak to match. He loves playing soldiers, the perfect excuse to ambush his buddies. Dad, a Marine, approves, bellyaches at me to get out of the house more often. I take to the stoop, where I can sit with the Hardy Boys for hours.

unchanging roles
of generations

Winter. Abel shows me how his snowballs are formed around rocks. Better weight. Stronger effect, like a missile. When his snowball nearly takes out a neighbor’s eye, the cyclops is fighting mad. He and Abel pound and pummel each other. I stand aside and watch their solid muscles. When Dad gets home, Abel denies the hidden rock. I say I didn’t see it. I am banished to my room without supper for not joining his battle.

the phantom
my husband
has never met

—Short-listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2

Scott Wiggerman

A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Albuquerque poet Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets (Purple Flag), Presence (Pecan Grove Press), and Vegetables and Other Relationships (Plain View Press); and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats I and II: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (Dos Gatos Press, of which he is co-founder with David Meischen).

In recent years, Scott’s love of poetic form has moved largely into Japanese forms, and haiku and art have become more central to his work as an artist of both the page and canvas. For more, see Scott Wiggerman’s Poetry Pages.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Wiggerman’s introduction to his curated collection of haiku on the theme of the LGBTQIA+ experience, for National Poetry Month: Haiku of the Day, April 2023; scroll down a bit to access the slide show for April

⚡ The Story of Fire, haibun in Issue 16 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (January 2023)