In Death

      The video is blurry and grainy but it exists
    ICE agents surrounding a white vehicle in seeming olive uniforms
 
  The car is circling around and around, perhaps the driver uncertain what to do
    About the law enforcement stop
  A police vehicle hinders the motion of the so-called suspect’s white car by ramming it
 
  ICE arms were drawn
    But the car did not seem threatening nor did it run over any officers
      At least four shots fired into the suspect’s windshield
A 26-year old Colombian man
 
    All of this happening in small town, Maine
      Why the escalation
        What is so urgent?
          Having to make quotas?
 
      In death
        There is no more
 
            There is no protest
 
            Lying lifeless on the ground
      In death
          America has become vulnerable unto itself
 
      In death
          There is no coming back
 
        Why did he need to die?
 
      In death
          After two-hundred and fifty years
        Have we not learned from so many other countless
And senseless deaths after all these years
 
      In death
        The suspect cannot make any final statements
 
      In death
        The suspect cannot be taken into custody
                                                           
Why did he have to die for a better economic life?

J.P. Linstroth has a PhD (D.Phil.) in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is an Adjunct Professor at Palm Beach State College and the author of several books: Marching Against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland (2015, Lexington Books); The Forgotten Shore (Poetic Matrix Press, 2017); Epochal Reckonings (Proverse Publishers HK, 2020, Winner of Proverse Prize 2019); Politics and Racism Beyond Nations: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Crises (2022, Palgrave Macmillan); and Swimming in Blue Shadows: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems (2022, Proverse Hong Kong, Proverse Supplementary Publication Prize). Read other articles by J.P..