Stunt
The first time that I died, I was as surprised as anyone.
The good guy’s slugs tunneled into me,
steel dark and slippery in the hole it dug.
I felt the mineral-thick gush
onto my one good suit. The girl screamed,
and that’s all that I remember
Afterward the cop asked, with a beefy shudder
how a two-bit hood like me stole the show.
I woke up a few blocks over
somewhere on Vine, my suit immaculate.
I understood it was a calling
like the man who sculpts the monster’s head
from foam rubber, or the girl who ensures
the cigarettes are smoked down to the same length
from one take to the next, I have this dumb knack,
and I always wanted to be in pictures
By now, I’ve probably done it a hundred times
stabbed to death in seedy men’s rooms
tossed over the rigging into some on-location sea,
they love me for that. You can never get a mannequin
to flail. Even so, I try to take it serious.
Think about the swell times whenever
it happens, just in case. Reliving auditions where I knew
I’d nailed it. Girls like bright soap bubbles about
to burst on the mirror. What the ladies wanted
with this shady character, I couldn’t tell you.
It must’ve been the pictures, must be they recognized me.
It’s almost like someone sends them, right in the speakeasy
where a woman alone shouldn’t be –
the dull blue sash that matched my pocket square
like we were meant to be together.
Lately, they carry the clues of how the next one will go
if I look careful. Silver fillings are bullets, sleeping
in the back teeth. A belt buckle shaped like seashells
is something with the ocean. The white-blond hair
of the one that got me hit by lightning.
The last one had these eyes, a pale jade color
just like the chlorinated floor of a swimming pool,
and sure enough, here I am.
It takes some getting used to
how the blood spools dark out the hole in my vest.
Sometimes I think I hear the bullets talking to each other
yelling down the hallway of my intestines.
Sometimes I think I hear the dames calling
after me, calling my name.
So I moan and twitch and end it.
My heart, a dirty possum,
motionless in their searching eye.