Breadcrumb #631

ELWIN COTMAN

Time pinwheel me back to the day
when a French girl followed voices 

to wear men’s clothes,
sworn sword to a king for whom 

she drowned in red and yellow. 
Her name became sacred. 

But when the hateful mouth opens on a martyr 
we don’t ask what drove her 

to accept that new job,
or leave her cigarette burning,  

or dare into the world another day.     
When killers stake a black woman’s heart  

it is never called assassination. 
Beatification is denied

 the woman desecrated in orange,
called death-loving.

There was no uniform she could wear
To make herself inviolate
in the seething lonesomeness of their cells 

as the French girl did, and was judged,
and loved. There was only fear and the shrinking iris 

when they killed the young leader.
What voices drove them? 

A divine cacophony
calling them to protect, to defend, 

the same crusade their grandparents waged     
when wisteria learned to mimic the noose.

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