Please Please

"Please, Please", he screams
spitting light through the cracks in his teeth.

We, the township, have assembled.

Ed in the corner hangs his head; its dangling
from his tall figure ripe for the pluckin. Mary, Ed's girl,
tries to comfort him, but he shrugs off her moist hand.

Mrs. George huddles little Jeb with one hand
adjusting her glasses with the other;
they've traveled a distance down her sweat lined nose.

One cough because shes nervous,
twice cause she's ready to speak.
A third cough echos in the oaken walls; a soda pop silence follows.

"Dr. Cullen only really knows the time it takes
to deliver a baby, he don't know gun wounds;
why would he?"

A soft moon light beams through the stained glass
throwing a multicolored Adam and Eve on the ripped jeans of
Jesse and Ma Parnell with their messy haired girl Lee.

"I hear he robbed a bank and killed three men"
"I hear he had his way with Mary, multiple times"
"I hear he smuggled alcohol for gangsters "

The Negro Mima Jenkins holds her husband Old Tom's
hand. Both eyes are tightly sealed.
Both lips curled shut.

"I knew that boy would go bad. Didn't I say that?"
"Hush up. The rector'll know whats best".

But truth was nobody knew.
Nobody really knew anything 'cept
the sight of Ed's boy shrieking "Please, Please".

So all 12 of us just watch him slither across the floor.
Thankfully, after another minute he stops.
There was nothin any of us could have done.