Summary

“Downhill Triolets” is divided into three stanzas. In the first, “Sisyphus and My Brother,” the brother is arrested again, and the father drives to the police station to pick him up. It has happened many times and no one is surprised, although the brother denies the charge he is accused of. The second, “God, Lionel Richie, and My Brother,” begins with another phone call to say that meth has landed the brother in jail, this time for breaking into their grandmother’s house. God told the brother to break in, and Lionel Richie told him to dance. In the third section, “Tribal Cops, Geronimo, Jimi Hendrix, and My Brother,” Geronimo and Jimi Hendrix are the archetypes that either the speaker or her brother are reading into his wild behavior, and in this stanza, it is the brother’s family themselves who call the cops...