after a video of Diana Khoi Nguyen reading from “Ghost Of”

Gaps between sounds deadened and dressed like a deer
one day from rot. I set the table on an uneven floor. I set

the table with body stuff and stapled papers. With words too
and the spaces between words—the surrounding air of trauma

and trigger. A writer there shares her own story, her brothers
gunned down and the hollows that sketched themselves in.

So I too speak of my brother, how bullet holes fill and scar,
and somehow, simultaneously, dig themselves deeper.

There’s a lot of Jesus in her story, which is to say, a lot of death
dressed in the purple robes of her puffy eyes. There is no Jesus

in my story, and yet, my brother survived. I hear myself wish it
and come true. If I had another wish, the word survive

would feel less combative in this room, less I win. But survival
has always been a term tucked between was and wounded.

I help clear the table. I set it again, halfway this time,
set somewhere between meal and freedom: with bucks so fast

and blinks so strategic, everything happens mid-air.

Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the poetry collection Every Living Day (Thirty West Publishing House, 2023). His poems can be found in The Offing, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Delaware.