The Policeman’s Fist

1.

1969

Chicago burning through another summer.
Mother hails an officer’s blows
            like penance
For being alive
            the crime of delivering a girl
From her mother’s hands
            stained with grief.
Scrub your hands with that bleach little girl. Oh, my little green girl.
That burn is how you know God is listening.

                                2.
We drove five blocks south, Linda buried under a pile of laundry:
hid in Benny’s apartment: Officer’s cracked down
Benny’s door: his body soared like Sunday spiral as they threw him
From his own fourth story window: the concrete shaping his legs
Into a blooming question upon impact: The ground sang
I’ve got you Benny, they can’t hurt you more than this
Which of course was a lie and a stupid one at that: this was when we began screaming
Mouths sharded and half-mooned in the gnawed summer heat: lips burnt with the future

We could not erase: white shattered bone: I watch you forced through
The blue car door: a sailor exiled to sea. I watch as criminal and witness both.
At least once. At least once.

                       3.
Mother, show me the men.
My ribcage bright with hummingbirds at the thought
Of what we’ve stolen. Where is the body and its fist?
Were we first born from an officer’s gun as he pistol-whips the teenager?
What would we give to take the revolver under the mattress,
trace the pain back to its birth point? Feral and four legged in the fields,
back hunched to the rain, no, our tears, we aim at whatever moves
When the blood starts singing, gossamer pouring from my hips.
Who knew manhood was such a feast?
Let them smell me. Let him kiss this bullet.

4.
Oh Mother,
Forgive this body you gave me
And it’s ten syllable dance toward extinction.
I have held off as long as I can.
Forgive this page for the pain it cannot hold.
Forgive anyone but me.

                        5.
My son
You write to me
As the city becomes trapped
In its song once again.
It’s been years since I’ve touched the city.
Since it’s held me back.
Your father once ran ten searing blocks
In the middle of summer just to hear my name
Crawl through his throat, like the shadow of a prayer.
When I could not defend myself, he raised his young body
Against those with hands raised against me.
He stood alone against the sky, a cigarette in his hand.
Look there: his bullet flares and fades, beckoning you to him.
Follow the light. Follow your father.

6.
Mother, it is so dark.
And I haven’t killed anything in so long.
Where is the word you wanted held?
If I knew I was a born a highway
I would’ve worn a better dress.
If I knew I was your son

I would have sunk my hands
Into the song tearing us
Apart. Lifted that bone to my lips
Drunk.

7.
Officer, this world has a red edge
And my mother was on the other side of it
Long before you swore fealty to your pain.
I am standing on the other side of the keyhole
You carved in the showers, to watch the rain undress.
I am the eye you cannot put out. Follow the light, pig.
Follow it to your death. I’ll be waiting.

Ian Powell-Palm is a poet and musician currently splitting his time between Amherst, Massachusetts and Bozeman, Montana. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has been published in journals such as Chapter House, Chiron Review, American Poetry Journal, and others. His first chapbook Highway Fatality was released in 2022. His work attempts to interrogate familial trauma, sexual identity, and the resurrection of the dead. He is the co-editor and co-founder of the literary journal Rejected Lit Mag. You can find more of his work on Instagram at the username @Ipowellp16.