White Print Inc
Will Copeland
it takes a man
to raise a man. Broken
characteristics stack stubborn. Sinews
move with the heart trailing.
The impact of fists
snuffs the sun,
closes a certain
eye. Open the curtain,
brother! Hurt
travels twice
as fast as the bullet
from pistol into adolescent
brain. Don’t let the groove
within which you twitch
hips and swollen
elbows carry you into a field
where only silent, stone
dead flowers grow.
Will Copeland
This mess beneath my bed–
it’s time to clean
dancing hands, broken sticks
my sister mad
again. Ohhhhhh,
We are sick
in the center
of a storm.
Nothing will escape:
an arsenal of belts
flung to the floor–
We all want
to come inside.
Serious storm
clouds approach
We all have monsters
We all make mistakes
Our hands have danced furious rhythms
beneath his belt, our quivering legs
My dead brother’s
basketball, drum sticks, horn. Phone rings.
My sister under the bed
Visiting hours from five
to eight. Get me out
of here,
she cries. A couple of tears
I wear in a chain
and hang around
the door
and when I’m not
wearing it, it hangs
around my door.
Sometimes it drops
onto the wooden floor.
I kick it
under the bed when anyone comes near.
Will Copeland
I married a woman
Who said our songs
Sounded like screaming.
I brought her into this house.
She held her lips tight as
A clenched purse, asked
Why is your mother screaming
Like that?
The cats were purring
The TV inside, screaming
The trees shaking
Inside the violent wind.
And we sang with the birds.
With the birds?
The birds who were not
Eaten by the cats,
The bullets that flew also,
The relentless,
Bloody forks.
Will Copeland
I find a dead man inside
every poem. He chews
time, snatching time
from trembling lips. He is
rubbing it all over
his face like sunshine.
Father, who is
this man I see
every time my fingers stretch
towards the page
this house we have
yet to fill?
Sister, who is he
laughing on my bed, kicking
the air with lanky dead
limbs, looking like a boy
in the photograph I
pray to? Momma? Momma?
Momma? As if asking the same
question for years
will pour the blood
back into a skull,
yank the screams out
of an ear
our mouths
this hungry page.
Will Copeland
i.
I came home to find young
Lee taller &
bigger than me
I came home
to find him still on
the carpet bloody
upstairs
I came home to Detroit the city
is a bullet in my brain
is the blood
the ground
the open
book
dropped
the awkward
angle
ii.
when my brother comes to
meet me in my dreaming
we fling our fists
into each other I wake
up to pain
the pain all over