This is called "The Angel of Phillips Park",
and it's about in the neighborhood
I live in Minneapolis, which is a fairly racially
diverse neighborhood.
There was a kid who was playing basketball, and he was shot.
He was not the designated target, but he was shot.
And so this is called "The Angel of Phillips Park".
Two crows in the alley garbage, shrieking and scuffling
at a leg bone or stale eggs sandwich.
The night impatient takes them down.
The raucous throats and wing flurry now silent.
Night of the first violence just after a strong spring rain.
Walking out for a few hours, the dealers
at the corner fists and their baggy pants,
Nikes sliding the walk, black hoods or knit caps,
bleary eyes catching it all.
In the park on Franklin outside the Four Winds School,
the last kid on the scholarship of his mind
pops the air with arcs, trey after trey,
counting the final seconds of the game.
The crowd roars in his ears like the ocean he's never seen,
and just as he hits the top of the key,
the first shot steels through the sternum one
then his shooting hand so quick pulling the trigger.
And it flows from the porous spot appearing in his gut
like a black hole in the heavens.
On this court where he always won and gave it all,
his body topples in a puddle so epic and slow in its fall,
some bit of his brain still hot.
Made it.
Nothing but net.
Silence now.
Stepping through wet grass.
Held in check to the flashing lights
and the tires of the city's finest screeches
to the tennis courts.
The static on the radio, mics 10-4 breaking up.
The crows start at it again.
And no one sees one rising higher and higher on wings
of blackness and prayer a jam so devastating and powerful
revealing all the light in this universe
and giving it back as a crow, a night, a boy, a star.