Original Pain
Original Pain
Original Text
Execution Poems (Wolfville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2001): 15.
1Rue: Hot pepper of mothers bullwhipped till blood
2lava'd down their backs and leapt off their heels
3was one-hundred-proof, fire taste of slavery
4Pops spooned us raw charring first-hand.
5Geo: His whip gashed, splashing into flesh --
6what it was made for. The twang
7of his whip walloped our shook heads
8like a hammer of acid.
9Rue: With a swoosh of blood
10down the back, the hips, the ass, it shot.
11Red sizzled, blazing, off our bodies.
12So hot, we felt chills.
13Geo: Lash hit us like a whoosh of rain.
14Tall screams reared out of Three Mile Plains.
15Pops planted two twisted, crooked canes.
16See: they flowered into two crooked oaks.
17Rue: His fist's width was as long as a horse's cock.
18His Decembral love iced over our hearts.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2004
Special Copyright
<b>This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of George Elliott Clarke or the Gaspereau Press permissions department.</b>