Edwin Ray Dockery

In 1959
Edwin Ray Dockery died
a most unnatural death.

My grandmother led us
to our neighbors’ door
for the viewing.
His casket stood open
where his young face,
under a sheet of glass,
could’ve turned up and smiled
were it not for the heart
that beat no more.

His belly had its own story.
The Daily Courier reported
his last meal:
A dozen oysters,
a dozen shrimp,
two veal cutlets,
salad,
six buttered rolls,
half a banana pie,
and banana ice cream.
He then smoked an expensive cigar.

No Ricky Ray Rector, this guy.

Peer into the future:
1992. Ricky Ray Rector.
Billy Clinton’s radar
is all over Ricky Ray.
To get elected
he can’t be a softie
so the man whose frontal lobe
was sheered away years ago,
must die of legal, lethal poison
on a gurney.
The officers come to take him
for his last walk
but there’s a question
begging his consumption of pecan pie.
“I’ll eat it when I get back,” he says.

Edwin Ray sizzled
at his appointment with death.
Ricky Ray complied.

No one asked Edwin Ray
how it felt to choke the life out of a person
or why he reacted so strongly
to the advances of another man.
His retort to justice levelled,
“I am not guilty of first degree murder.”
His grave is marked simply
with no hint as to his cause of death.

Yellow Mama,
that most uncomfortable seat
in Alabama’s death chamber,
took him
into her arms and
with a tug to her throttle
sent a shock wracking him to his core.

Standing before the pine box,
my cousin is the one who figures it out.
She grabs my hand
and pulls me, running out the door.
“We have to get out of here!”
“Why?” I ask.
“Why is there a sheet of glass
over his body?
What is that smell?”

My cousin squeezes my hand
as we run back to
our grandparent’s house.
She tugs frantically,
“They electrocuted him!
They electrocuted him!”

The village is quiet that evening.
The usual gathering of mill workers
on my grandparents’ porch
doesn’t materialize.
There’s a slant toward the house
with its casket tucked
inside the front door.

All night I bury my nose
into my pillow.
That smell.
The odor of burnt flesh,
settled in my nostrils,
makes its way into my dreams.

God, Mother of Mercy,
hold Edwin Ray in your arms forever.
God, Giver of Solace,
find his mother’s tears
and make a river.
God, Holder of Hearts,
shore up a father’s dreams for his son.

The act of a rogue state
is kindled by a forbidding spark,
unable to see the face
I spy with my childlike eye,
sleeping under glass.

We all collapse
under the weight of that box.