6 September 2021
They begged for their lives, but I killed them anyway. The sheriff wishes he could have shot the man to ribbons (read through him like a newspaper), but he walked out of the charnel house, hands in the air. Something went wrong this week, we’re told; last Sunday he attended church and heard God talk to him about saving a girl from suicide. One week since the USA left Kabul, one week since God took this ex-Marine as his death vehicle. God dressed up as methamphetamine and told him to wear body armor, find the woman and child. The Madonna saw death in her baby’s eyes, but at an interval of decades. Newer narratives come faster; lacking nouns, they put verbs at full throttle and fire them. I remember a man took a hammer to the Pieta, but she and her son got fixed, slowly. “He’s evil in the flesh,” the sheriff says. We’d have forgotten Jesus by now, riddled with bullets like the others, buried in a ledger. Body and blood shredded, running down the driveway of a suburban home into the gutters. Hosed out later. We can’t find where his body began, or where it ends; he’s torn from history, turning to kill it. My son dreamed he was pushed into a vat of acid; the one who pushed was himself. On the cross, he had time to integrate their violence. Woman and child had no such luxury. The 11 year old (who will be fine, despite her wounds) told police, “there are three dead people in the house.” The ex-Marine said he was a survivalist.
No comments:
Post a Comment