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The Hangman’s Last Knot
Hangmen are a dying breed.
At home we take up crafts, edge sidewalks,
remove remnant nests from birdhouses in the spring.
A snap of bad luck, the breaks I guess.
Our fingers must learn to live
with softer knots: apron strings at kitchen sinks,
silk ties worn while seeking work.
Some of the condemned found God
while others lost their heads.
Mine dropped neat as spit from a bridge,
pierced midnight like a shining needle.
For years the governor barely tossed in his sleep,
his wife rifling through dog-eared books ‘til dawn.
Old Sparky smoldered in those thinnest hours
as guards in Utah dreamed of dumdum bullets
and wardens in Alabama nodded pellets into waiting pails.
Now the state wants to lose its sting, its taste for blood,
as if an IV needle held the tickle of a lover’s tongue.
If they pull the trigger on this deal, send me out to pasture,
I won’t drink coffee with former coworkers or pore over
the sloped hills of obituaries at breakfast.
But some days I’ll drive past the prison yard,
the potter’s field where all abandoned bodies go.
Say a prayer where my former convicts rest,
their old bones undone by time, like me.
Return to Volume 2.5
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