The Bird is a Metaphor

It’s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die by Hanif Abdurraqib (2018)

Everyone wants to write about god
but no one wants to imagine their god

as the finger trembling inside a grenade
pin’s ring or the red vine of blood coughed into a child’s palm

while they cradle the head of a dying parent.
Few things are more dangerous than a man

who is capable of dividing himself into several men,
each of them with a unique river of desire

on their tongues. It is also magic to pray for a daughter
and find yourself with an endless march of boys

who all have the smile of a motherfucker who wronged you
and never apologized. No one wants to imagine their god

as the knuckles cracking on a father watching their son
picking a good switch from the tree and certainly

no one wants to imagine their god as the tree.
Enough with the foolishness of hope and how it bruises

the walls of a home where two people sit, stubbornly in love
with the idea of staying. If one must pray, I imagine

it is most worthwhile to pray towards endings.
The only difference between sunsets and funerals

is whether or not a town mistakes the howls
of a crying woman for madness.

My friends, this poem fucking BANGS. I aggressively dislike poems that use couplets for no other reason than to make the poems... look more poem-y. (I will die on this hill.) BUT that's not what Abdurraqib is doing, so I am free to love him. If the whole thing is in one stanza you lose some of the impact of the breaks, and have I mentioned yet how much I like his breaks? I still don't get the title, but I'll keep thinking! Here's more of his poems to explore later.

(Title thoughts? Comments? Favorite lines? *___*)