I wrote this in the spring of 1997, in honor of Larry Isaac Powell, 28, an black man beaten by seven officers, all white, from the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office and the Soddy-Daisy Police Department after being pulled over on suspicion of DUI on Highway 27 in the northern part of the county on 3 February 1993. Two of the officers choked him to death, one with a hand around the front of his throat, the other with a baton from behind. I'm posting it now in memory of Eric Garner.
Seven blue
uniforms
One man on the
ground
Hands cuffed
behind him
Dead from
strangulation
Whose fingers
left their marks
Along your
windpipe
Whose baton
imprinted itself
On the back of
your neck
Many years ago
you died
And still no one
had paid
Until there is
justice in this town
There’ll be no
peace of heart or mind
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