Kirsten Brady and Worthy Evans

Kirsten Brady
Poly Glyphs
14″ x 17″ Graphite on paper
Response

Site Specific
By Worthy Evans

Inspiration piece

Absence would be a way
of cottoning to its significance.
A field photograph
of close-cut wheat, an officer shown
troubling for an aide to bring up
the unknown soldier from the front.

The rest is conjecture: No request
for a smoke or a drink
of hot alcohol from a tin cup.
Here it was, and that was it.
Not a blindfold, not a wall or a pole
to hold a body up against.
In this area where an army happened upon
one day before, a pen was built
to hold livestock
that would otherwise interfere
with the process that armies keep
to ensure their existence.

Not a drum, not a hankie, not an open command to do it.
Just a hand, a trigger, a bullet, a man on his knees.

Not a rope on him, not an awkward speech,
not a declaration of execution, not a signal.

At this place some years ago
a gun fired one round at a downward angle.
A water tower marks the spot
of the execution,
in what is now a tangled wood.

 

 

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One Comment

  1. Posted October 6, 2017 at 7:29 am | #

    Nails it — a routine execution in the field.
    Bang — we’re dead.