Street Mythology
I’ve died every day.
peaceful deaths, mostly.
unspooled insides where respect bonds to dignity,
left this bag of meat and blood
and ignored ambition with tears and jagged edges,
to steam between potholes and 50-cent bags.
the world lends me chalk.
my battlefield smells like playgrounds.
when I say “peaceful,”
I mean that there is no protest.
But until dirt shrouds this lacquered case,
it covers my name,
and there is violence.
bullets in bucket hats, an opus of bucket drums.
it began where they redlined, and
my funeral ends with red tape.
once I’ve passed on again,
they’ll have written all they can write.
the ink won’t have dried before my story fades,
there’s no room for new history here,
even the truest stories.
less room for new stories,
less still for news stories,
and I am story long before I am man.
last time I died, I was an 18-year-old boy.
the streetlights exposed my muscle fibers,
flesh peeled back gunshot by gunshot, and
the vultures who fired still feast on my memory.
my chains loosened as I lay in my brother’s arms,
clutching my stolen fire, arms trembling in shock.
I awoke in new chains, broken by new vultures.
my resurrection is nothing biblical or unordinary.
it will not feel triumphant, and
those who deny me do so intentionally.
I will be one fault from forsaken testimony.
forever more past than present,
a wrinkled scripture.
an Old Testament promise
of wrath before forgiveness.
I always die alone, usually young.
place and time can’t be wrong that way.
mug shots fit better than graduation pictures.
gunshots are quicker than court dates.
my legacy—a deflated balloon and airbrush vigil.
Notes:
This piece is included in Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School, edited by Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, Peter Kahn, and Dan Sullivan. Published by Penguin Workshop. All poems are copyright of their respective authors.
Source: Poetry (December 2021)