She always said she wouldn’t come
back next time,
Then she really didn’t come back
Bim waited in the doorway for two
days, just looking out
SingDead and ShoNuff walked up to
the house
ShoNuff carried a green backpack
The white van of church volunteers
drove into town
singing hes got the whole world in his hands
Bim was once a diver, at the bottom
of the river
He welded the supports for the new
bridge underwater
He saw indescribable terrors and
quit the job
He sat in the diner and paid
twice what he owed for lunch
and got sick in the bathroom
Rock went to her parents house
Her grandfather rolled a blunt
bigger
Than a child’s arm and said
You cant ever trust the white man
The smoke billowed from the prison
compound
The guards were dead or had
retreated
At the sleepover, ShoNuff pretended
to be asleep
And pretended to be talking in his
sleep
Falling out of the window in
pretend sleep
Lil Randy’s Yukon reflected a
purple sunset and
A purple sunrise
He didn’t know if he was asleep or
awake
Underwater or in his mother’s house
Partners all the way from
Huntsville and Memphis
Lined up all the way down the block
Waiting for the gate to open at 8
The cops were sure that Lil Randy
was selling something
Junk Baby was revered and adored by
the children
And sniffed dope while he lay in
bed
The church volunteers waited
outside Lil Randy’s mother’s house
Holding paint brushes, buckets and
ladders
They did not know that his mother
was dead
The cops in orange raincoats smoked
and watched the prison burning
Rock called Bim to ask how were the
children
SingDead walked home from school
and listened
To her black friends talk shit
About her white daddy
Without saying a thing
When Lil Randy was ten years old
He saw his father beaten by the
cops
He decided to stay out of life
He did not excel in school because
He did not care
But he did not fail out
because he was
smart
He stayed in his room and listened
to the old records
and when he thought he was going to cry
he turned the music off
After he quit the job
Bim rode a tiny motorcycle
from Minnesota to Mississippi
through a hurricane
to get back to Rock
when he saw her standing with the children
outside of the house
all of them in raincoats
Bim felt so weak that he couldnt blink
and the rainwater made him blind
In the Skin of a Lion
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