Ann Chadwell Humphries
No Sanctuary
~after Dylan Roof
You earned your exile. Slaughtered nine innocents.
Confessed not to a priest in a curtained booth,
but to police on a security camera. Your voice stained
like grease. In the courtroom, you dressed in stoicism
like steel armor. Proffered no regret when family screamed
at you to Feel it! Spoke your rebellion with no affect.
When jurors wept, you hardened like concrete. When a daughter
sobbed I forgive you, you withdrew to your bunker of obsidian.
I have no jurisdiction to forgive you. Only a saint can leap
that chasm. My faith declares you a child of God, so must I.
You are where you need to be: locked behind
concrete and steel, twisted moral compass for company.
Ann Chadwell Humphries’s have appeared in Jasper Magazine and on The Comet, the bus system of the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority in Richland and Lexington counties in the Columbia metropolitan area of South Carolina (an initiative of Columbia’s inaugural poet laureate, Ed Madden). Winner of a 2017 Into the Fire scholarship from The Sun magazine and recipient of a Jasper Magazine Emerging Voice award, she lives and writes in Columbia, SC.
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