TRAYVON

                    by Luther Hughes 


a boy: forced
             loose, bawling
as bullets—a new breed
of dandelion—  
settle inside the body’s hidden
             garden, rooting, then budding
             once light slithers
from the moon to the eye—pearled
when lacquered
             with tears

and the after-speech:
             these assholes, they always
                                       get away.

his howls, i hear,
             storm the tongue,
split, spit out
             before breath retreats
into the fleeting lung.
                          then, as though habit,
             ​more howls pirouette
the mouth,
             the mouth a night of its own
             where the teeth glitter
                          already-faded stars—  
             still flared, like a fire
             or broken glass
                          caught in sunlight.

it’s how his shrieks cradle
a new lexicon
             for suffering, is strange
fruit hanging, swaying
                          from my ear,
             sneaking between each muscle
                          as i begin to flinch
like a crow seeing its fly-flooded
             carcass reflected
                          through the gun’s endless
                          iris,
                                       how the bird would flick
                          its wings, scatter
                                       in disbelief, afraid
                          of what’s to come. what it thinks
                                       to come.

and so, for a moment,
             as if a light
             switch too heavy
                          to lift itself,
i turn off the audio
             with the tremble of fingers—  
                          the knees wrestling
                                       for stillness, too,
             like the heart
                          as it slows. then nests.
i bow my head, my eyes,
                          feel myself labor,
             the fluids circling
                                       veins, sing:

we fall down, but we get up.
             we fall down, but we get up.
                          we fall down, but we get up.

—still
a shivering house
             of a boy wailing,
                          twisted into earth
             beneath him, blood shaved
             when the skin splattered
                          like wood, was tired
                                       of doing,
                                                    of keeping
                                       whole.  
i pull myself
             into the bathroom,
the blind white,
yank back
             the shower curtain,
             run the cold water.
strip.
             breathe.
                          get in.

photo by Robert Strong

Luther Hughes is a Seattle native, but is currently an MFA candidate in the Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Shade Journal and Associate Poetry Editor for The Offing. Winner of the Brutal Nation Poetry Prize and Windy City Times Chicago, 30 Under 30 Honoree, Luther’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Vinyl, NAILED, Solstice Literary Magazine, and others. You can follow him on Twitter @lutherxhughes. He thinks you are beautiful.