Everyone is having boys, my mother says.
That means war is coming. The way
it came in the old country—boys
rising out of the ice and cold
potato fields, boys laying bricks
and digging, wells and trenches
and bodies—boys out of other boys
like my boy, born the year before
cops killed even more black boys
and more boys killed other boys
for loving boys and more
swastikas showed up on walls
and more walls went up, invisible, where
once ran rivers. But a river
is not a boy. A river can either
run dry or bleed and everyone
will blame someone
darker or an animal, that gorilla
who dragged away the little boy
or the gator who stole another.
But in the water, they seem
so strong, resilient even, these boys
born months apart, these boys
who suck the water down, who beat it
with their tiny fists and kick as though
they’re running, these boys who grow
not knowing they were born for war
and that it’s everywhere
and there is no
outrunning water.