‘Steven’s Echo’ by Stevie Howell

Before I understand biology
I believe I am Steven’s echo
– the boy in the womb

who arrived pre-me, who
went to sleep in my mother’s sea
at 3mos & never woke again.

In terms of Occam’s razor
it seems obvious –
hoofs of horses, not of zebras –

my recycled name that translates
crown of thorns, & a deep, deep
voice that screams inside alleles.

The tale about a failed
hermit crab doesn’t help.
He couldn’t tell a conch shell from

a soup can, couldn’t find
his sickness a home. Wound up
a hoarder, muttering

into his dominant claw. Alone.
That I am my stillborn
not-to-be elder brother is

my ur-myth, my ur-belief,
before Jesus, before the multitudes
& the multiplicity, before

desire, denial, & the capital
offence of adolescent expectations.
Before we crush each other

into our sex.

~

& there goes Angela
w/her 13-year-old babyfat arms
shoving her colicky son thru

the plaza in a cheap ass collapsible
stroller. Past Bernard. Flushed.
That slut, grade 8 shrugs.

Forgive us Father.
Even though you made us in
your image. Our frame of reference

or doom was your son proselytizing
in some faraway desert,
the anthropomorphizing weather

of You, & afterschool cartoons.
A cross-legged blond boy
w/the clichéd face of an angel

grips He-Man under a crabapple
and demands as I roll by on bike
if you’re really a chick lift your top up!

show me your titties! – as if
any proclamation is brave
and not simply caving.

I never wanted to be a sad girl
some dragging of age story
but here “she” is, talking too much

reverb cranked. Statistically speaking
that boy is a dad by now.
What is his boy yelling, from where,

& at who?

From issue #3: autumn/winter 2016

About the Author
Stevie Howell is an Irish-Canadian writer. Her first book of poetry, Sharps (2014), was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second collection of poetry, I left nothing inside on purpose, was published in 2018 by Penguin Random House Canada. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus and Ploughshares and was anthologised in The Best Canadian Poetry in 2014 and 2015.