Chapters (43)

and my name is asked again—I want to

screech out, Swan! I am only a swan.

The Sky, Now Black with Birds

If I say riot helmets outnumbered the protesters

who, after Troy Davis was executed, stuck around

to throw useless punches into the courthouse grass

while a woman near the forest of batons

lay sprawled facedown in the lawn gripping a Bible,

a green sea beginning to memorize

the shape of her grief—If I say Death,

cure death, and had such power over the scythe,

how many cranes would it take to lift her

out of this drowning?

If I tell you

Lawrence Brewer was executed

five hours earlier for the murder of James Byrd—

if I ask you to look for birds foraging

between Brewer’s intricate tattoos,

I don’t mean to distract you from the cross

that still burned on his arm that day.

I don’t expect you to stare into a graffiti

of iron crosses and spider webs scrawled

across flesh and find a thrush vibrating with birdsong,

but I want you to know why I listen for more

than the cawing of crows:

I wanted Brewer dead.

So dead, my tongue swelled fat with hexes, so fat

I wonder how forgive could ever fit inside my mouth.

Somehow it’s always there, fluttering in the larynx

of Ross Byrd—the man whose father was dragged,

urine soaked, by Brewer behind a truck.

Watch him say it.

Forgive.

I swear,

the word has feathers. I want

to learn to get its wings between my teeth

before more retribution

blots out the sky.

When I tell you

glare flickered off a cop’s visor

and startled a single crow away

from the murder that flapped the sky into inky pieces,

I want you to watch close enough

to notice the feathers aren’t black at all.

Like bruises and ink, they are

only this full-bodied purple—purple so rich

your eyes will still swear it’s black the next time

you see it spread out across sky. Watch it

spread like the flush of pancuronium bromide

into diaphragm, watch close enough to pinpoint

when the muscles lock.

If it is said the injection

is humane, we mean to say this

is humanity: no crack of rope, jerk

of limb, no bloated face, clenched jaw, or reek

rising twisted in smoke from a cooked torso—

we mean to say there is nothing to disturb

the nest between our ribs, there is nothing

to make a heartbeat rumble

like a murder of so many wings.

Looks Like a Boy

A Detroit Hum Ending with Bones

Glass above my bed trembles

at the touch of bass pouring thunder-thick

out of twelve-inch speakers and I almost don’t mind

being jolted awake because I know this song.

It’s not a favorite song, but I know it. Sometimes