PHAETON Poem by Ishion Hutchinson

Ground-levelled, behind a line drawn,
he took aim at a circle of precious marbles,
precise, interrupting the passaging ants,
the shot was fired, and if they had known,
the other boys, that before speaking, the poet
of old had also bent and stroked the earth,
dividing himself from his people—
if they had known any poet—they would
have stopped him before the sun burst
from his fingers, scattering glass beads.

They found him with an empty third-eye
the bullet drilled into his forehead, a deaf
hole, knowing only its own darkness there
in the parched-grass field; flies whirred, unwavering,
a sun chariot's axle-songs, heat rose a mirror
before his skull, and his mouth opened,
amazed to this mask, its bleached-stillness,
like a stone lit from the inside, faded
as a moon marked in the dust—at this face,
his mouth opened, amazed, stayed open.