They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

by Hanif Abdurraqib

Michael is about six years removed from having his daddy’s nose & what better way to sever ourselves from the sins of the father than to rebuild the temple & the kiss in the picture is gentle the way it might be for an old friend or a lover or two kin leaning for a moment out of the damned American engine of pop music again at their backs & howling for them to shake their skin to the ground & sing the hits & in the picture Whitney and Michael are under a tree & on a bridge somewhere South & it is easy to imagine a song in the leaves & it is easy to imagine a song in the water beneath them which once perhaps ran through a preacher’s hands or over a baby’s head & history repeating itself wouldn’t be so bad if not for the chorus of violences accumulating along the landscapes where small miracles sometimes took place & in the picture both of their eyes are closed & I wish for a home in that darkness a small & black eternity