For a Bail Denied

           for A.S. 

I won’t tell you how it ended, &

his mother won’t, either, but beside

me she stood & some things neither

of us could know, & now, all is lost;

lost is all in what came after—the kid,

& we should call him kid, call him a

child, his face smooth & without history

of a razor, he shuffled – ghostly – into

court, & let’s just call it a cauldron, &

admit his nappy head made him blacker

than whatever pistol he’d held,

whatever solitary awaited; the prosecutor’s

bald head was black or brown (but

when has brown not been akin to Black

here? to abyss?) & does it matter,

Black lives, when all he said of Black

boys was that they kill? – the child beside

his mother & his mother beside me &

I am not his father, just a public

defender, near starving, here, where the

state turns men, women, children into

numbers, seeking something more useful

than a guilty plea & this boy beside

me’s withering, on the brink of life &

broken, & it’s all possible, because the

judge spoke & the kid says

—I did it I mean I did it I mean Jesus—

someone wailed & the boy’s mother yells:

This ain’t justice. You can’t throw my son

into that fucking ocean. She meant jail.

& we was powerless to stop it.

& too damn tired to be beautiful.