My Father’s Brain

By Clint Margrave

I’m looking at my father’s brain.

My sister and I found it
stuffed in an envelope
in my parents’ garage
yesterday.

Only weeks before,
it had been alive,
now it was here,
stacked in this box,
with all the other
stuff we don’t know
what to do with.

“That’s the frontal lobe,” my sister says,
picking it up
and turning it around
to show me.

“Can I keep it?” I say,
lifting it into the sun
for a better glimpse.

“Do whatever you want with it,”
she tells me.
“It’s yours.”

from The Early Death of Men, NYQ Books, 2012