Still Life of Second-Line by Lizabeth Yandel

Sketch the face of the man whose head was shot
but my hand mis-draws lines like this:
we were at a parade, he just got caught
in the crossfire. But his jaw was stronger
than that. Yes, there was BBQ and we
were drinking in the street because it was
New Orleans where heat pours so heavy
you dance to not evaporate. We could say
we didn’t see it coming. We could say
it was the glinting shards of multicolored glass
cemented atop the cemetery walls that distracted
us. But even the sky was boiling that day,
………………………………………even the buried.
Sketch the face of the boy who shot the man
in the head but my hand reaches out
to console him. Maybe 15, maybe terrified,
maybe wishing the sky would swallow him
in a sweet flash of electric relief and spit
him out someplace he isn’t a teenager
with a gun, hiding in a troop of teenagers
with guns, hollering down the block
at a teenager with a gun. If an entire crowd runs
…………………….from the boys with the guns—
……………………………………And if a city?
…………………….And if a country?
Draw my hand along the Mississippi River’s
calculated curves until it finally delivers
at that morning. I draw it over and over. The sky
bright and reflecting brass band notes bouncing
from trumpet bell to tomb cross to the bald head
of an old man, struggling as an old man does
to run from fury. Each time I draw the gun,
each time I mis-write words like: get down or
………………………………………wait or, each time
………………………………………I watch myself run.

Lizabeth Yandel is a writer and musician based in San Diego, CA and originally from Chicago. She is a candidate in the creative writing MFA at UC Irvine and is currently a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Her poetry can be found in Rattle Magazine, Lumina Journal, Popshot Magazine, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. Her work was chosen as 1st runner up for the 2018 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry.