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Representation
by Sam Friedman
A Rutgers crew rests in the Raritan
on the morning after the President’s speech
on Abu Ghraib.
As the President said,
prison torture or prison murder
“does not represent the America I know,”
nor that of the happy crew now rowing
upstream.
But ask the inmates of Texas prisons,
or those in Pennsylvania
where Army Specialist
Charles A. Graner
learned his trade as prison guard,
or the prisoners who were guarded
by Staff Sergeant Frederick in Virginia,
or the INS detainees
of Elizabeth, New Jersey,
or the inmates in Mississippi
in Parchman in the ‘60s—
or in Parchman or Coahoma County
even now.
Ask not those upstream
about torture,
about prisons,
but forgive them not
for they choose not to
know.
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