November Edits by Brendan Constantine

This afternoon I rebuild a house,
a street, and your body, leaving out
the sickroom, the neighbor’s wakeful
dog, the blur in your lung. I add

more flowers than there were,
more fits of laughter, the two
deck chairs you never got round
to buying. I’m on the fence about
the fence — I want it to be higher,

that dog farther from your ear,
want more space between you
and your last day. But then
you’d lose the view, the sound

and color of the apricot tree,
the burnt sugar smell you said
you could live in.



Brendan Constantine is a poet and educator from Los Angeles, California. He is the author of several collections of poetry and his work is widely anthologized. He currently teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been developing workshops for writers living with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI).