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Self-Portrait with Gunshot Vernacular
- The Kent State University Press
- Chapter
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3 s e L F - P o r t r a i t W i t h g U n s h o t v e r n a c U L a r all summer was one wet weapon after another: barb of sweetgum in the ankle, stranger’s knife blade, the wasp stuck in your sneaker. rainfall kept the crack addicts asleep in the church basement amid remnants of the broken window. o window, come again in glory and the block will put a piece of itself through you, makeshift spear to the side, stone to the back of the skull, thunder of gunshot. here, we all know that sound. if somebody flinch at firecrackers, they may as well mispronounce your name. This place is old as a mother tongue. here, the world is always saying Ya mama, Ya mama, and you write poems like they brass knuckles or empty 4 bottles of o.e. Believe that. Believe in wildlife, that snarl and sex, glimmer of i, i, until death. Most people stop believing in lions after visiting the zoo, but you seen too many broken locks and this neighborhood is bordered by a jawbone made of light. Rhyme or die. Shoot or die. Smuggle yourself out like a banned book or die. This is the voice calling to you in the wilderness, its dark milk like blood in the throat. ...