Small Bullet

Life with a father is overrated. I find myself petting rose petals that turn out to be puddles of his summer blood that turn out to be mirrors that turn out to be built-in, that turn out to love me, that turn out to love him more when he's disappeared/ He squeezes his consciousness into tabloid headlines: Bebop millionaire in trouble, Nigger music revival shocks God into halting to apocalypse, Your mama's black eye gives whites the blues, Blacks Only Jazz Festival outrages no one, Small bullet, big drum, Tony Williams fakes heart failure claiming he was tired of y'all, Rapper moves to South Africa, declares he's never coming back, Small bullet punctures shop window, riots erupt, Watts is gone, again, Runaway fathers discovered at a refugee camp in Tennessee, undisclosed location—I find myself petting rose petals that turn out to be broken microphones dangling from the museum wall that turns out to collapse into a drum set on display in an installation called Fake Church where a bunch of us decked out in club gear confess our sins to one another over cocktails and jest, it's getting better than right and wrong in our wrecked imaginations. Mo' God, less religion. ™