Thank you to I am not a silent poet for publishing American Rattlesnake, a poem about the US President’s recent pardon of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Here’s news that inspired the poem:
“a federal investigation found that deputies had used stun guns on prisoners already strapped into a ‘restraint chair.’ The family of one man who died after being forced into the restraint chair was awarded more than six million dollars… The family of another man killed in the restraint chair got $8.25 million… after the discovery of a surveillance video that showed fourteen guards beating, shocking, and suffocating the prisoner, and after the sheriff’s office was accused of discarding evidence, including the crushed larynx of the deceased.”
—evidence against former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, as reported by Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker
Read the poem here.
Anna Kander 