Sunday Poem

Shahid Reads His Own Palm

I come from the cracked hands of men who used the smoldering ends of blunts to blow shotguns, men who arranged their lives around the mystery of the moon breaking a street corner in half. I come from "Swann Road" written in a child's slanted block letters across a playground fence, the orange globe with black stripes in Bishop's left hand, untethered and rolling to the sideline, a crowd openmouthed, waiting to see the end of the sweetest crossover in a Virginia state pen. I come from Friday night's humid and musty air, Junk Yard Band cranking in a stolen Bonneville, a tilted bottle of Wild Irish Rose against my lips and King Hedley's secret written in the lines of my palm. I come from beneath a cloud of white smoke, a lit pipe and the way glass heats rocks into a piece of heaven, from the weight of nothing in my palm, a bullet in an unfired snub-nosed revolver. And every day the small muscles in my finger threaten to pull a trigger, slight and curved like my woman's eyelashes. . by Reginald Dwayne Betts from Shahid Reads His Own Palm Alice James Books, 2010