Shahid Reads His Own Palm

I come from the cracked hands of men who used

the smoldering ends of blunts to blow shotguns,

men who arranged their lives around the mystery

            of the moon breaking a street corner in half.

I come from “Swann Road” written in a child’s

            slanted block letters across a playground fence,

the orange globe with black stripes in Bishop’s left

            hand, untethered and rolling to the sideline,

a crowd openmouthed, waiting to see the end

            of the sweetest crossover in a Virginia state pen.

I come from Friday night’s humid and musty air,

            Junk Yard Band cranking in a stolen Bonneville,

a tilted bottle of Wild Irish Rose against my lips

and King Hedley’s secret written in the lines of my palm.

I come from beneath a cloud of white smoke, a lit pipe

            and the way glass heats rocks into a piece of heaven,

from the weight of nothing in my palm,

a bullet in an unfired snub-nosed revolver.

And every day the small muscles in my finger threaten to pull

            a trigger, slight and curved like my woman’s eyelashes.