The Sound of Hunting

Travyon Martin, Sanford, Florida, 2012

I.

He is screams

and a galaxy of holes.

From habit, more howls.

I imagine the mouth. The blood

crowning, caustic red, the head

of a flattened rose, days sour,

fallen from its stem.

As if there is anything left, I turn up

the volume of his suffering, flinch

as though seeing my fly-flooded figure

pushed in front of the gun’s eye.

I am trapped by the anchor of his dying.

The audio is over.

I am heavy.

My hands press against my thighs.

I rewind the audio.

I hear him again slipping away.

II.

When shot once, scream but quietly.

When shot a second time, let loose

the lion from your throatcage.

If shot a third time, transform

the lion into a harp

and strum your way to sleep.

III.

I speak his name when a man gardens into me.

I watch his blood blemish the bedsheets

like a painting gone wrong.

I ask the man, What makes you different?

What makes you alive?

I claim I am finding myself.

Because I am finding myself, I wake,

drunk in the arms of another.

He is dead, I tell him.

He is always dead.

My hands will not release him

into the earth. I give the evening

a loose definition of moving on:

a razor-kissed wrist and a firefinch

flitting the thin air.