At Liberty

Everyone will say he drove to the gin

with a truck full of cotton, so he drives to the gin

and gets in line, and everyone will say

the congressman pulled in behind him, so he gets out

yelling Herbert Lee I’m not messing with you this time,

and his affidavit will say Lee had a tire iron

and there are no photographs so there is

a tire iron and since the congressman will say

Lee swung at him his hand will grasp the iron

under the tangle of his own dead weight

and the congressman will leave and will not

see him again so he just lies there bleeding

and no one will touch him so for a time

he is just a story or a huddle of starlings

or crows or a cloud of bottle flies that might

explode and disappear until the witnesses

can say he’s there and an undertaker can come

with a hearse from the next county over

and then he is dead and the congressman can

tell his story so Herbert Lee will rise

from his coffin and swing his iron

and the FBI can come to make him into evidence

but someone will have roped him into his grave

so there is no photograph and no one sees

the cotton boll wicking blood so there is no boll

only a clear, white negative in the dark

and a paper that slowly fills with flies.