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Barbra Nightingale is the author of the poetry collection Singing in the Key of L, winner of the 1999 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Award, and Greatest Hits, a chapbook of twelve poems spanning twenty years. Her book Two Voices, One Past (2010), a collection of poems in her mother’s voice and her own, was a runner-up in the Yellow Jacket Press annual chapbook contest, and she was also a finalist in Narrative’s First Annual Poetry Contest. Nightingale is a professor of English, literature, and poetry at Broward College, Florida.

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Siblings: X and Y

by Barbra Nightingale
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Brothers—those boys
turned men we used
to live with, never knew
their silent selves,
no secrets shared like apples
on a rainy afternoon,
no tea sets and dolls,
companionable and dull.

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