GUN/WOMAN/SON

Terrance Hayes

His mother stands & pries the slug
from her brain.  It’s 1952.  A bloodstain
crawls in sunlight down the wall,
glass melts on the floor.  She shifts
the baby, my father, to her clean side
& drops the bullet in the ashtray beside her pipe.
The shooter runs, his gun shucked into high grass
like a crow with no beak.  She looks
through the broken window catching the scent
of pine straw and clay…all my life here 
& I never noticed…My father doesn’t stir beneath
freckles of blood that will brown
by the time the blanket swaddles me,
but his face is twisted on the one dream
infants bring to the world.  In it there is a river,
an oarsman with breasts, Indian-gray hair bound
by a red bow.  His mother’s wound
is a veil of roses.  She turns from the window
holding her face in one hand, my daddy
in the other.  There is no sheriff in this county.
I appear in the guise of an old farmer;
kiss the tip of her nose & place my father 
in a peach basket.  The day is ending,
the gunman halfway to Atlanta
with a satchel of hope.  My father & I,
we just wait for the train.  By Sunday we will be
different people.  I will wake in the basket
saying, Daddy, tell me again how I was born.

From Hip Logic ©2002 by Terrance Hayes
Used by permission of the poet and Penguin Books