Murder 1899 (A photograph) A sepia christ blasts through the years. Trial by press and the pale mob’s threat that Justice must be seen and done? It’s still a lynching electrically disguised. Pale hands pretend it’s science makes them check the straps and feel the leather. The local brass dressed for the camera to record their magnificence at the nigger’s execution. A hundred years later this frightening picture, cruel and anonoymous, speaks to me. It cuts through my laughter, my confident smile that everything’s fine, that all’s for the best, that weighing it up, government knows. When I look at the man he’s in a foreign land bearing the burden and truth in his eyes where words become the skin of thought. |
