Third Prize Peter Sears Poetry 2023-2024

Lucas Montpart – Third Prize

Celebrating My 21st Birthday With My Dead Brothers

Up the year I go,

flights of stairs

where I skip steps,

not looking down.

I knock on my oldest brother’s

door, suggest the bar,

and off his xanny-laced haze,

he says Yeah.

My middle brother joins,

bringing along his girl,

a deadbeat enabler,

stories with holes

that leak what isn’t there.

After guzzling our beers,

we all played a round of poker.

I folded and lost twenty,

but my middle brother kept

shooting his chances in the dark.

I hug and wish him

and his unlucky girl the best.

My oldest brother and I

toast to the future.

Foaming mugs over

a long conversation waiting to happen

like I’m still his little man.

Only in my wishes.

Up a few years,

I’ll reach 23, then 28,

then I’ll be older than the both of them

could ever be.