Shahid Reads His Own Palm by Reginald Dwayne Betts

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.