The Trees The Sky The Dirt

Author’s Photograph

Like 

the worst kind of art. 

Nothing we don’t 

already see, didn’t 

know. Especially 

as these 

photographs 

were not made 

to bear witness. 

If they testify, 

they testify

to blindness. 

We feel therefore 

the coercion, 

the betrayal 

of confidence.  

As if we are not

of that world, 

of what was done. 

As if once we see 

the dead man

as one of us 

we don’t also see 

it wasn’t the rope 

that killed him 

but those of us looking on.

Philip White teaches English and world humanities at Centre College. He has won a Pushcart Prize in poetry and a Barnstone prize for poetry translation. His poems have appeared in Slate, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.

(c) 2020 Philip White