PIETÀ
On the photo of Jennelyn Olaires
grieving over her husband, Michael Siaron, published in The New York Times (August 3, 2016)
He is the poor man unjustly executed by the state.
She is the desolate woman of inconsolable loss.
He dies sputtering in the darkness of a silent movie.
She weeps a ceaseless cataract of tears.
He weighs less than floating dust, inutile to tip the scales held fast
against him.
She sorrows over his limp remains, bludgeoned by the fist of power.
He is snapped like a cracker in several places.
She receives his broken body like a beggar.
He is expendable, a worthless ceramic fragment.
She grieves, grief is all she owns.
When the prefect summons his charge, interrogates him, leans forward in
his judgment seat, and affecting consternation, grandly delivers his verdict of
death, he will afterwards wash his hands of bloodguilt, roundly curse drug
users as human blight unworthy of life, revel in Adolph Hitler’s bloodlust,
claim that the thousands who are summarily shot dead resisted arrest, and deny
that he ever gave orders to instigate genocide.
Originally published in The Penmen
Review (August 31, 2018)
Jennelyn Olaires grieving over her husband, Michael Siaron
Photo is posted on this website according to principles of fair use, specifically, it is posted for the purposes of information and education. Also, the poem directly refers to the photo.
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Gonzalinho
“Writers tend to fare badly under autocrats. Dictators understand very well that the strength of thought and analysis that literature embodies is a threat to the mind control that is an essential feature of tyranny. …We need to write now, write well—tell the truth in all its messy complexity. It’s our best shot at helping to preserve a democracy in which facts still exist and all of us can speak freely.”—Jennifer Egan, Time (December 24-31, 2018)
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