Handcuffed

by Angelo Verga

at Times Square we rise up
surface for air, exchange
one inferno for another, but we
can’t pass crowd packed neck
to neck against sweatstained thick police,
round cornered man jammed
into cramped cheapstore doorway.
the no-armed man’s black, on his knees
shirt ripped hands held cuffed behind his back
head bent as if whispering sins
to priest who isn’t there.
2 cops army hats raked back
guns out and cocked
bracket him, not winged angels,
00000no classical music is playing
00000 00000to make this dreamily unreal

voices from the crowd
some of them shouting (one turns out to be me):
what’s he done? what’s the crime?
he stole something? he stole something?
00000he didn’t steal nothing of mine!

in another sector of this empire that’s decayed
they move today to slay a man
father and grandfather
for killing an officer of the law
with a 38 gun, tho the bullet in the cop
was a 44,
00000an expert said; later thought better
00000 00000to recant

here in their district of sex displayed for entertainment
they get to play-act confession:
the subdued man’s guilt unlawyered
convicted on pavement, seedy streets crowded with peers
who explode
00000when poked, made to disperse.
yet hear everywhere
00000those who have ears hear
00000 00000of him, and the other one
and the other one, and the other ones,
00000 00000the ones they’d like to disappear
when no one sees,
00000 00000the ones they’d like to make us
forget, not free.

Angelo Verga is a poet and New York postal worker living in the Bronx.