Hate Crime, Oc. 1998
by G.L. Morrison

For Matthew Shepard, who was 21 and gruesomely murdered in Wyoming

The light figures into everything. The cold indoor light
that diffuses the room with angles of distance and subterfuge,
and belief; the willing belief; the willingness to believe that one man
is like another, and the hand that two men extend to a third,
as they say we're men like you,
young like you,
gay like you,
glad to have found you,
is not the hand that will close into a fist
is not the hand that will close around his throat
holding the throat like a bottleneck, like an hourglass
that breat slips through like sand, until it stops.
Time has run out.
Whatever light there was figures into the moment.
The headlights of the blood-splattered truck,
the light that pinned him against the fence,
is an accomplice. The light that deliberated on the scene;
the weight of cold air, solitude, intolerant gravity,
the angle of resignation; none is innocent.

The morning light which didn't recognize what it had done
the night before, didin't recognize
what it found, wanted not to see him as a boy
toturted by other boys; as a man murdered for loving men
wanted to see him as the rags he had become
wanted to see him as a scarecrow left to frighten what?
to frighten who? out of these killing fields.

In the long night before day found him,
question and impatience talked in the dark.
The question of waiting met with the impatience of pain.

They talked about the angle
of history and the burden of coming snow.
Finally it was the light which came. The light which found him.
An arrangement of leaves conducted by brisk wind
updraft, downdraft, reason, unreason
all our lives blow down a street like this.
c 1998

gl is a friend of mine. she's one of those poets that without independent magazines, without independent presses, bookstores, places to perform, hers would be yet another voice silenced. she is a fat feminist, lesbian, poet living in oregon.

posted by brooke at July 27, 2002 12:58:10 PM