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?