Raymond Arfinis Barker, 42, of the 2200 block of West Ninth St., was being held without bond Thursday in the Delaware County jail, now facing three preliminary charges—two counts of dealing in heroin, and maintaining a common nuisance. —The Star Press, Muncie
i have a confession to make
before the grenade rolled into your home;
before sirens & cuffs & windows shattered;
before they ended your six-year hiatus from the cell;
after i saw your daughter driving her pretty princess car in the middle of the street, trying to get her bent wheels unstuck from the curb;
after she shouted at me—hello-myneighbor-hi!—and you & Amanda laughed from your porch at her toddler antics and we all waved at each other;
after last month, when from parted blinds, i watched another white man shoulder a fully automatic into your home, hand it to you stock-first;
after considering my old house on Cortsville Road, where every harvest the rats fled the cornfields to hunt for new homes: basements, cabinets, attics, vents, & once my neighbor's kitchen counter, where the prof spit coffee, scurried for his pistol, and stalked for a clear shot—banged perfectly legal, like the time he changed his lesson plan from lecture to electric, drove out to a field with the boy from his 101, dimmed car lights, and tried to forget about wife & kids & their Shih Tzu, who would shit, eponymously, into his manicured flower beds while Wife curled tight her lips and i pretended not to see, chopped our lawn with roar of engine & blades, mower breathing fire in the form of rusted leaves, shrouding lines between our grass
& theirs; after the heat of one August's long dark when Mr. Morris rapped on our front door to ask us if we'd seen his son, escaped again in manic state, summer shadows haunting his breath, and we shook our heads, turned the deadbolt, but some doors won't stay shut, busted or blown
open like the house of the man across our road, whom my parents called Burt Reynolds, whose real name i never knew until his door hung wide, flapping for days and someone wised up, checked on him—i try to recall him less as a corpse and more as the soldier who would sit rocking on his stoop, leveling heirloomed shotgun at moles in his yard, and once, the barrel's maw sought to devour my escaped pup, and i linked gun with threat for the first time, felt the same chill
as today when your little girl drove her pink useless getaway car across the street to tell me hello; after that, i called the cops and stayed on the line until the last digit of your address. i'm sorry. i'm so—i didn't know they would flash bang your kitchen, concussion blasting windows to the gutters of your trampled home. maybe
i suspected. tonight, through a new crack in my window, i hear dogs next door. they won't quit barking.