Joey Neil Hilborn

Joey always told me, laughing, as though
it were actually a joke, that he wanted
to kill himself but it was never the right

time. There were always groceries
to be bought and little brothers
to be tucked in at night. Don't worry.

Joey isn't going to kill himself
twenty more lines into this poem. That's not
the kind of story I'm telling here.

Joey got a promotion and now he can
afford Prozac. Joey is Joe now. Joe
is a cold engine in which none of the parts

complain. Joe is a brick someone made
out of fossils. If you removed money
from the equation, Joey would have been painting

elk on cave walls. People would have fed him
and kept him away from high places
because goddamn, look at those elk. I think

that the genes for being an artist and mentally ill
aren't just related, they are the same
gene, but try telling that to a bill collector.