Ann Chadwell Humphries
No Sanctuary
You earned 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.
You dressed in stoicism like steel armor
proffered no regret
when family screamed at you, Feel it!
Spoke rebellion with no eye contact.
When jurors wept, you hardened like cement.
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
a twisted moral compass for company.
Poems by Ann Chadwell Humphries 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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