An Open Letter to Her Brother-in-Law, On His Regrettable Decision to Shoot Himself

I have nothing for you but spit and hot
nails. Let her be sad, but don’t expect much
from me, ‘cause it’s always about your pa,
and you never did nothing but inherit
the line and the right way to hold a gun.
Your old man taught you proper kickback one
stiff noon hour outside Billings, with the butt
in your shoulder and your feet set just so.
But your pa didn’t pull the trigger. You
dragged him and all your Montana troubles
on the other end of the line all the way
down to us here in mud-slung Truckee.
His widowed ears could hardly hear you
across the miles of italicized
telephone poles leaning along that highway
line. If he’d have seen you—drunk with a gunmetal,
mouth pressed in the soft space under the hard
V of your jaw, blubbering God knows what
into the receiver—he’d have told you
you’re doing it all wrong, damnit. Ass backwards
and all wrong. That sudden glint of clarity
lodged in your pa’s grey matter at the same
time that the world cinched around the bark
of the gun’s syllable, your torn skin wet
and lettuced around that purple fact
forever at the base of your throat.
The sound as close to lead in the old man’s
ears as lead’ll ever come. Unless
he takes the unfair West up on its only
offer, the only way we all handle
things out here. Don’t expect nothing from me,
‘cause I wished you dead before your thumb
registered the cold curve of trigger,
awkward in that angle—more like striking
a light than the hook-and-pull of nailing a bull elk.