Last Testament
Gabriel whose mother has just died never lets death
get between him and a good pun, this one about love’s
rigor mortis, squabbling survivors. “Where there’s a will,
there’s a way,” he says, which makes us laugh, and I think
how water, too, always finds its way, no matter the roof,
new flashing, the clean gutters—no home impermeable.
Am I talking here about greed or impermanence? I’m not
sure, but lately, I’m committed to weatherproofing.
“A little powder, a little paint makes a girl what she ain’t,”
the secretary at the detective agency would incant
while applying lipstick in the bathroom mirror. She was
a balding strawberry blonde, and I was a summer intern.
There’s a season for repairs, and I’m in it, which means
I’m in the pharmacy, a basket already heavy with
sicknesses and conditions dangling from my forearm.
I need moleskin, witch hazel, emollients, and pills—lots.
Standing before the pharmacist with his black oversized
glasses and pores I long to astringe, I struggle for the words
in Spanish. We call it time release in English even though
time never lets go, and the only eternity I can hope to know
is being in the zone. What is the idiom for a coffee spoon’s
unhurried pace, IV drip wins the race, if not poco a poco?
I ask for pills with extended action, medicine as Marvel
movie franchise. The pharmacist looks down at the cash
register, then up at the ceiling’s cracks, before divining,
prolonged liberation? And, haven’t I tasted a soupçon of it?
Between outbreath and inbreath, between reach and retreat
when the stillness bequeaths me a will that bends like river,
a raft of hydrangeas. “That’s exactly what I’m looking for,”
I say, and walk out of the drugstore into summer’s slow rain.
get between him and a good pun, this one about love’s
rigor mortis, squabbling survivors. “Where there’s a will,
there’s a way,” he says, which makes us laugh, and I think
how water, too, always finds its way, no matter the roof,
new flashing, the clean gutters—no home impermeable.
Am I talking here about greed or impermanence? I’m not
sure, but lately, I’m committed to weatherproofing.
“A little powder, a little paint makes a girl what she ain’t,”
the secretary at the detective agency would incant
while applying lipstick in the bathroom mirror. She was
a balding strawberry blonde, and I was a summer intern.
There’s a season for repairs, and I’m in it, which means
I’m in the pharmacy, a basket already heavy with
sicknesses and conditions dangling from my forearm.
I need moleskin, witch hazel, emollients, and pills—lots.
Standing before the pharmacist with his black oversized
glasses and pores I long to astringe, I struggle for the words
in Spanish. We call it time release in English even though
time never lets go, and the only eternity I can hope to know
is being in the zone. What is the idiom for a coffee spoon’s
unhurried pace, IV drip wins the race, if not poco a poco?
I ask for pills with extended action, medicine as Marvel
movie franchise. The pharmacist looks down at the cash
register, then up at the ceiling’s cracks, before divining,
prolonged liberation? And, haven’t I tasted a soupçon of it?
Between outbreath and inbreath, between reach and retreat
when the stillness bequeaths me a will that bends like river,
a raft of hydrangeas. “That’s exactly what I’m looking for,”
I say, and walk out of the drugstore into summer’s slow rain.
Spring 2026
Brandel France de Bravo’s third book of poems is Locomotive Cathedral, selected in the Backwaters Press contest, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press (March 2025). Her poems have recently appeared in Best American Poetry, 32 Poems, The Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the DC Commission for the Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Art: Pamela Hobart Carter
While We Listen, 2025
An any-side-up, ink, pastel, and acrylic on (cheap) paper
While We Listen, 2025
An any-side-up, ink, pastel, and acrylic on (cheap) paper