Bullet points
by Jericho Brown
I will not shoot myself In the head, and I will not shoot myself In the back, and I will not hang myself With a trashbag, and if I do I promise you, I will not do it In a police car while handcuffed Or in the jail cell of a town I only know the name of Because I have to drive through it To get home. Yes, I may be at risk, But I promise you, I trust the maggots And the ants and the roaches Who live beneath the floorboards Of my house to do what they must To any carcass more than I trust An officer of the law of the land To shut my eyes like a man Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet So clean my mother could have used it To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will kill me The same way most Americans do, I promise you: cigarette smoke Or a piece of meat on which I choke Or so broke I freeze In one of these winters we keep Calling worst. I promise that if you hear Of me dead anywhere near A cop, then that cop killed me. He took Me from us and left my body, which is, No matter what we’ve been taught, Greater than the settlement a city can pay to a mother to stop crying, and more Beautiful than the brand new shiny bullet Fished from the folds of my brain