_______
Reginald Dwayne Betts
let me tell you bout the night i died
for Charles
shots
emptied
the block.
tothe sound
of Junk Yard Band’s “go
hard.”
myblood,
sangria poured
ondry pavement.
you closed
youreyes
inhaled
bucked
on my funeral
nevervisited my
memorial
exhaled
and weed
smoke rose
inmourning
Misunderstood
My woman lays
in the bed
I’ve splintered,
on the mattress
I’ve taken
ahatchet to, opened
up the inside
until maggots
bled out
myhollowed eyes;
she shivers
becausewhat
I say sounds too
closeto the thud
of my Timbs
walkingaway,
with only a lit
Newportand fingers
warm from her flesh –
and if our child
hearsthis
in the womb,
hewould still
only get
halfthis suicide
song, he wouldn’t
seeme on my knees,
in the shadows
ofa dark bathroom,
my neck and back
sostraight
they become
thetombstone
I want to pray
myselffrom up under.
Soldier’s Song
His brim tilts, a razor blade
poised to cut his face in half.
He’s crumbled on the stoop
like a crushed pack of Newports,
an oak cane leans into the crook
of his right knee – shrapnel breaks
you down, he tellsme. Seventeen years
in the service only to hit Iraq
like a stilled sledgehammer
and have steel scraps
turn my knee to a crimson mush.
Six empty corona bottles are lined
before his feet like dead soldiers
and all I can think to do is sit and riff
bout what Bush did to his knee,
but he pauses, stares toward the North Star
and tells me, I had a woman once.
My lady is in my car waiting,
and the engine’s hum says she feels ignored.
He says, I had a woman once
and left her to play god in some
foreign land. Hetells me he never
wanted to make officer,
instead needing the blood to dance
like lies before his hands.
