From I’m Always Looking Up and You’re Jumping, which will be published next year by Random House.
At the end of my young boy’s gold
rope there was a gold bullet
at the end of the bullet
was my face golden wide and beaten
by a sky’s precious daggers
the preacher pressed palms
to my young boy’s forehead & held him
underneath water
at the end of the flood
the preacher says we all might see heaven
my young boy’s grandmother filled the tub that made her baby holy
& at the end of it all she became a god
on god
someone you dreamed of killing will outlive you
at the end of your clock a grandchild’s face will be turned
toward a blaring sun by hands you wanted cold
& lifeless in some years past & just that living child
squinting into the heat may grant you mercy
at the end of the line that leads to the gates
at the end of the flood we & all our animals walked
the wet earth by twos animal of fluorescent rage animal of boundless
grief animal of envy animal of greed two guns grazing its hip
at the end of my chain there are two flightless birds
at the end of the anguished birdcall there is a dying
country at the end of the bullet on my young boy’s chain
I resemble the unkillable
prayed for & never preyed on
I name the dying & the drowning & it never comes for me
put that on everything put that on my mother’s good name
put the flowers over the stone & let the seasons return them
to dust put that on my mother’s laugh on the symphony of her living
which now fades in & out of my memory like an old soul
song fighting through a radio’s static
put that on my mother holding her newborn son & turning his ear
toward a father’s mouth & the father singing a prayer
at the end of the prayer you begin dying or running
from dying at the end of your running the light bends
over the wet ground & the gold lashes your unburied face
On God, it will take more than water
After Tiona Deniece and Westside Gunn