McGuire's Twenty-Five Minutes

Benjamin S. Grossberg

... as he was executed with a combination of drugs

never before tried in the U.S.

A portable dark. Maybe a cave inside

a syringe, that mind wanders. A dark

of deep, deep in the earth, or well wide

of it -- a starless dark. Or a dark of work:

of files to be read, a self-erasing weight

in which mind unknows itself. An ocean

dark: trench in a drug cocktail. The freight

of mind embedded in its silt. Or station

dark: arctic night, buried under snow --

lone researcher, coffee mug, forgets his voice.

Or a dark of watching dark: advancing slow

in clenched fists, in gasps that make no noise.

Some dark. But how, now, to pry it open --

bring light -- to see what we let happen?