poem: Geoff Kagan Trenchard

 

The man he intended to shoot

 

You can see he is sick to his stomach and wants to vomit
because he just shot a man he did not intend to shoot.

-Michael L. Rains, defense attorney for Johannes Mehserle
commenting on the video footage of Mehserle shooting Oscar Grant in the back
while Grant is hand cuffed and face down on a train platform.

 

The man he intended to shoot was not a man.
Did not gurgle and weep as he died.
The man he intended to shoot
was a prop. The man he intended to shoot
would have made him famous.
He would have shot the man
and freed the woman and protected the town
and halted the invader and won the hearts
and won the minds and won the big game
and saved the whole world.

 

The man he intended to shoot had no bed. No kitchen.
No shower curtain that needed cleaning. No toothbrush.
No favorite spot in the break room. No preference
how he took his coffee if you’re going out for some thanks.
Had no hat and no coat that looked just like a million others
but smelled only like him.
GEOFF KAGAN TRENCHARD’S poems have been published in numerous journals including Word Riot, The Nervous Breakdown, The Worcester Review, SOFTBLOW and November 3rd. He has received endowments from the National Performance Network, Dance Theater Workshop, The Zellerbach Family Foundation and the City of Oakland to produce original theatrical work. As a mentor for Urban Word NYC, he taught weekly poetry workshops in the foster care center at Bellevue as well as in Rikers Island with Columbia University’s “Youth Voices on Lockdown” program. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Riggio Writing and Democracy program at the New School and the first ever louderARTS Writing Fellowship. He has performed poetry on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, at universities throughout the United States, and in theaters internationally as a member of the performance poetry troupe “The Suicide Kings”. He lives in Brooklyn and can be found at kagantrenchard.com.