lagoonal body

there come whole days when the lagoon begins to whisper
when, from the very cells, the tiny voices' whining
rises.

there are whole afternoons spent under fields of flowers
shimmering, depthless

a lagoon is a body
dark, ringing
leaden, brooding
buzzing under the prism
of sun

so easily streaked by the graze
of each gentle touch

your body is a lagoon
just apart from the shore
so placid, implacable, so easy
to upset

the sea threatens to swallow back in

its slow wide ripples
your soft sounds of breathing

a lagoon is filling my room.

c. 1993
EPOCH 49.2 (2000): 230

the man they beat until dead
was of your approximate weight and height

within the armature of police sirens
a click resounded
within the aperture of police sirens

to have been singing down the corridors

to have never opened the door

to have been that tiny wail
as dusk shrugs

to know no difference
between plastic and sun

inhale and exhale

winks in cavernous multiples
among a sky full of stars

the tiny wail
as laboratory light opens

the man they beat until dead
was all of yours, all of mine

to have never known the difference
between touch and hand

On October 12, 1995, Jonny E. Gammage, a 31 year-old African-American man, was stopped by police while driving a car owned by his cousin, the Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ray Seals. In the course of seven minutes, Gammage was beaten and suffocated by five Pittsburgh-area police officers — Gammage had committed no crime. Later, an autopsy showed that Gammage was suffocated by pressure applied to his neck: witnesses testified that Gammage's trachea had been broken with an audible "click."

c. 1995
EPOCH 49.2 (2000): 231

amethyst

raw sweet of glass
redolent as scent

tiger's-eye trail
grit of transparency

scattering echoes
lake-spun light

sugary as saliva
topaz tone

disappearing sinuation
slush of night

for Dwight c. 1995

Christopher Cutrone