Wrapped in white cotton
nightgown, I try to hold
myself safe, lie wondering
in the dark of 2 a.m.
what shroud covers
the electrocuted body of a child killer
on death row fourteen years.
My body is hot from hours in
a snow-fenced pen outside
the pen, weeping, singing,
hugging, anything to get
through the moments to dying.
Jean touched his burned body
lying under a sheet at a mortuary,
green-skinned, burned sides of
shaved head, hot beyond body-
heat, fried by the state.
He is dead, his ashes carried off
to Ireland by the grieving girlfriend,
grief passed on/shared by victims
families, the rest of us to suffer,
get ready for the next state killing,
to take revenge on killers.
Who wreaks revenge on us,
proclaiming our innocence,
pulling white gowns over
rigid sepulchers of hate,
hot in our zeal for election,
staining our bodies beyond redemption?

Ruth Thone, July 1996