Bullet Points

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Bullet Points” is a 33-line poem that has no stanza breaks; each of its lines varies in syllabic length. It’s structured as a lyric, centering on Brown’s observations and feelings; it relies on emotional resonance rather than narrative.

This poem is told from the point of view of the poet, who positions himself as someone in the United States who “may be at risk” (Line 10) of police brutality due to the color of his skin. Brown uses the form of litany, or repetitive statements, to help organize the evidence for this concern as he enumerates the various suspicious ways people of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds have died at the hands of corrupt police officers.

The repetition of the word “myself” at the end of the first three lines (a device called epistrophe) drives home this personal concern. Rhyming couplets add to a sense of urgency and give the poem the feel of a call-and-response sermon. Enjambment, or not using punctuation at the end of lines, also adds to this urgency; end stops occur only five times in Lines 10, 19, 25, 27, and 33, bookmarking key points.

Rhyming Couplets and End-Stops

“Bullet Points” has the urgency and power of a Sunday sermon. The song-like cadence echoes that of a preacher, making the reader part of a congregation that is expected to return a “yes” or “amen” at given stopping points.

When Brown discusses trust, successive rhymes and near rhymes create the expectation of a pattern: “must” and “trust” (Lines 13, 14), “land” and “man” (Lines 15, 16). When this pattern is disrupted in Lines 17 through 19, which do not rhyme, the trust of the reader—much like the trust of the speaker in the poem—has been broken.

The same technique is used again with a list of ways to die more humanely than by gunshot. The end rhyme of “smoke” and “choke” (Lines 21, 22) is enhanced by the internal rhyme of “broke” (Line 23), which calls attention to the slower and more insidious victimization implicit in these other causes of death. The next couplet of “hear” and “near” (Lines 25, 26) emphasizes the proximity of potential death. When Brown ends this list with an end stop after “that cop killed me” (Line 24), this acts as a plea to the audience to “hear” (Line 25) how the threat is ever “near” (Line 26) him. In this way, Brown uses the structure to drive us to his most serious statement that he (or any other person of color) could be taken from “us” (Line 28) by a deliberate bullet to the brain. This technique of rhyming lists and significant end stops gives the poem its urgency.

“Every Line a Surprise”

In Alison Glock’s feature on Brown, she mentions that he reminded himself to keep “[e]very line a surprise” (Glock, Alison. “Jericho Rising.” Garden & Gun, 2020). This poem is an example of this approach: Line breaks occur in unpredictable and thus surprising places, which add to thematic significance.

For example, when Brown discusses the untrustworthiness of “[a]n officer of the law of the land” (Line 15), this line could be a simple description of a police officer. However, the line before it explains that Brown does not trust this officer, while the line after specifies that he does not trust the officer “to shut my eyes like a man” (Line 16). The emphasis on “man” (Line 16) takes to task implied concepts of masculinity and subtly suggests that the officer hides behind his gun for power; there is also the implication that racial bias makes this particular cop view Brown as less than “a man” (Line 16).

Yet, when the next line brings another surprise—it is not that the police officer doesn’t treat Brown like “a man,” but that the police officer does not hold to the same standards of reverence, ceremony, and pro-social behavior as “a man / Of God might” (Lines 16-17). In other words, this authority figure would never hold life as sacred as a holy man would. The officer has become brutal due to his grasping at toxic power. The loaded end words like “trust” (Line 14) and “man” (Line 16) help to elevate a major traumatic tension in the poem, shifting the reader’s perspective with each line break.