Author: Annie Wyndham
Location: Trois-Rivieres, Quebec - Canada
Annie Wyndham's poems have appeared in
Coraddi, Burlington Poetry Review, and
Spoonful, and fiction is forthcoming in the spring 2009 issue of
The Istanbul Literary Review.
Listen
He could not stop talking about her
and when he could not be silenced,
they arrested him.
Alone in his prison cell, he wrote of her.
So they took away his pen and paper
and destroyed his words.
So he scratched poems about her
with a matchstick
into his soap.
And they cut off his hands.
He stood by the window
of his cell at night
and sang to the sky
of his deep longing for her.
Then they cut out his tongue.
He lay on his prison cot
and thought of her.
They could not stop his thoughts--
And so they killed him.
Does it matter who she was?
Who he was?
Let’s call her “Truth”.
Does that change anything?
This is not about him.
This is not about her.
It’s about Them
and what they can
and cannot
kill in us.
For every voice that’s silenced,
a thousand more
will take its place.
