Stephen Gibson
Article on Torture
I just finished an article which said that when they dragged
the victim half-conscious from his prison cell, he begged
because he’d already been beaten and starved for days
(he knew what was coming—he could tell—and begged);
the article described a room slippery with blood, eyeballs,
teeth—and the means to leave anyone a shell—he begged;
the article told how skeptics, amused by others’ lack of faith
and who mocked their unbelievable versions of hell, begged;
the article told how social progressives and other reformers—
and all those who predicted ignorance’s death knell—begged;
even those who found themselves exempted—for a time—
because they were once true-believers under a spell—begged.
At the end, I wanted to read something about redemption,
about courage triumphing—he didn’t die well; he begged.
Stephen Gibson is the author of Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror, was selected by Billy Collins as the 2017 Miller Williams Poetry Prize winner from the University of Arkansas Press (February 2017). He is the author of six previous poetry collections. Gibson’s poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming in Able Muse, Copper Nickel, Gargoyle, Lake Effect, Nimrod, Per Contra, Quiddity, River Styx, Unsplendid, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and The Yale Review, among other journals.
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