The Subculture of the Wrongfully Accused

Ultimately improved by it: slant light hitting his prison obliquely near the state bird’s pointed head accentuated crest, the black-ringed bill from which wheat-wheat-wheat-wheat from which whoit cheer , whoit cheer ; cheer - cheer-cheer inspired Ronald Cotton to listen as in his head, the solitary cardinal indulged in snails which seemed like polished fossils of trophy hog tails (after prize butchery) that Ronald was able to recall, his hair a mess of replicas of them as industrious as the state whose success was poultry & eggs tobacco & soybeans as well as convictions: None as tightly knit as Jennifer’s (not even the state flag) that she could identify Cotton that cotton’s taking on appearances other than burst white of a dense localized haze from which to weave memory, following pink-petaled start, rather a satellite dish of a flower, pollen/sensor- studded antenna protruding from the center undeniably; the jury couldn’t acquit Cotton of its role in documenting and altering Jennifer’s history, many lives changed as result of consequences, sensors that boast duality of receptor and transmitter: witness: insects give and take, taint what is put out, taken in; mix it up so that interrelatedness spreads and the understandable error of metaphor becomes less erroneous over time: eleven years in prison, innocence locked up, protected although in prison, it resembled something else. If Cotton strained, he could see the top of a Ferris wheel on the horizon just a possible segment of a rainbow the length of a chain of cardinal feathers even though it wasn’t that at all. The eye witnesses all the time, even the unseeing eye is turned toward a focus on black, saturation dense as conviction; the eye processes, pulls in whole vista to a retinal speck of convergence which is to say there is some Cotton in Poole, some connection, independent shared participation in cold beer, occasional cards turkey-spread in the right hand without knowing the other sank into the seat at the cinema the same way and sampled Funnel cake at the state fair within a week of each other and more than that in common: both being men and convicted for what men really can and really do, do. Including sometimes confessions and apologies; cash reparations after the innocence is free to extend its parameters to unlocked doors, be an oversized over-zealous white bird floating down the aisle, its cottony haze lifted in order to kiss and marry Ronald’s calm delight in being able to take his time leave his longshoreman’s mark on ships that take some of him to any port in the world: durable goods such as the DNA whose precision detects human exactitude, and could build as many Ronalds as time would permit something Jennifer now desperately wants to do, restoring what was lost because it was like something else, because the fact of similarity is compelling, convincing; if connections could not be made, there’d be no havens, no fugitive status lost to fusion, no links to God, no human murmurings whose constant echoes are also the gentle silvery hum of fans praying over computer motors to cool them and also mimic motion of small wings amplified to make sound in the distance much like the electric razor preparing a head on death row clean as a light bulb. Ronald was prepared to be believed; he saw the quiet manner of his long days in court as evidence of his rationality and contemplativeness such as befits clergy; a potential propensity for order, mercy, the steadiness required to dispense blessings mostly on the undeserving without emotion or judgment selfishness or preference while he was being judged guilty for lack of emotion, for Jennifer’s incontrovertible emotional insistence on Cotton’s being the one—she had to finger him to be comfortable within her survival. No way to mistake to ever forget details documented in memory, the event relived to the point that it resculpted her brain into a Cottony bust (he was there to be the perfect model) whose reality floated away in a Poole, as only the reflection of Cotton identified as source. A situation also called (must-have) moonlight. Here’s the new & improved Cotton: eleven years in the making; enough time served to anger to ruin it; at that same room’s temperature it became doubt of clemency, pardon: peculiar butter that erupted as gratefulness for the miracle of absolute exoneration when his impossibility as rapist was proven. Even Cotton conceded that the composite sketch bore a just resemblance to Cotton, displayed a metaphor for men like Cotton, the seeds of capability in the structure of the face, the human repertoire that includes Cotton who softly consents to meet Jennifer when she asks him to funnel her regret and apologies deep into himself, accepting that she meant no malice toward him but toward the perpetrator whom many men resemble, all brothers, family of man resemblance; Cotton’s own daughter, Cotton’s own wife could be in a similar position; no offense taken, captivated by the beauty of Jennifer; her superior logic refusing to let the crime against her silence her; as sure, as certain, as dazzling about speaking up about mistaking Cotton for Poole as she was in identifying in the lineup the closest thing there to Poole the best available, the incredible likeness that memory seized, filling gaps in the recollected Poole with Cotton’s particulars. She felt better in her cotton- touched skin. Metaphor is a form of forgiveness; a short rope of it knots-up those that can’t come together any other way into being defined by the other. Strange and estranged pairings give rise to mutable truth that can yield to both dawn and twilight demands that things be seen differently. Jennifer in moonlight instead of being illuminated moon whose face was also in Emmett Till’s way, but this generation of Jennifer has another side home late after a day of good faith in which she and Cotton team up at a church to speak up about doubt as less a shadow than certainty. Memory is as accurate as metaphor, an overlay that always fits something, that like the purest most sparkling water is too naïve not to submit to any vessel into which it’s poured. Just to be guzzled. Perhaps the vessel in which cotton becomes a pool in which North Carolina is shaped like an embryo: Humanity still on the brink of infancy.