Aditya Shankar
The bullet is an employee stuck in the wrong job.
I prefer missing the mark, it says. The perfect shot
turns four-legged bulkiness into overturned cars.
Two-legged egoisms, flattened like the stuffed hide
on a hunter’s wall. One-legged leafy wisdom, reduced
to inaudible sobs. Never pierce a pound of flesh, it
prays. No splattering of plasma or blood then. No
post-mortems and surgical removals. No unwarranted
limelight or people gathering around. No forensic
examinations to track the fatherhood of violence.
Loud bawls that descend like a dark cloud, an
unending drizzle of grief. The sharpshooter isn’t my
best friend, the bullet clarifies. Bestows the infamy
of single-bullet theory. Perched in the hands of
children, I turn the City of God into a raging hell.
The aimless shot is the best shot, it consoles. To soar
over the sky, to fall in a deserted strip of land, to
be lost in a garbage dump, to not be accused of
murder. The bullet wishes to retire, to be ignored.
To be lost in layers of soil, to dissolve like a penance
over centuries: a native that longs to return to the
elements at the core of the earth.
Notes:
Single Bullet Theory – JFK Assassination
City of God, directed by Fernando Meirelles
Aditya Shankar is a poet from Bangalore, India who has been published and translated into Malayam and English. He has work that has appeared or that is forthcoming in Buddhist Poetry Review, Columba, Collective Realms Magazine, Slippage Lit and so on. Books: After Seeing (2006), Party Poopers (2014), and XXL (Dhauli Books, 2018).
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