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an extra one for your friends

              I will provide
the Baptist preacher

   for setting fire to any house
is a crime greater than murder

he's like a father
              to meekness

          scarce strength
                    to stand
her poor lips white

the guilty suffer
            not knowing
where the flames cease

the gallows fixed, covered with dust
as we go

taken by the arm      bound
and weak

thousands of inhabitants
in the broiling sun

          see what a number
you have brought

O what a dust there is

boundless ocean, where I hope to meet her

I heard thousands with one voice
                    proclaim Shame!
                Murder! Murder!

seventy thousand spectators

       you who read those pages
sister, uncle, aunt, cousin

I unceasingly prayed
       Lord, receive their spirits

who so speciously ensnare
                the unwary

tears flowed from her eyes
       hung for forgery
for house-breaking

to alleviate the sorrows
of the abject

       old sinners
snatched from the lion's paw

O hasten the day
    O bless this sorrow

a great clog to a man’s conscience

one might perceive
pensive declamations

dislike
                a humor fit
for the devil to work on

words that proceed
        from the mouth

gotten with child, begot
in her heart

private meetings fell
     from words to blows

marks thereof visible

his hand
           so with fury

finding her and White shut up
together in a chamber

an apothecary in Uxbridge
           a pennyworth

of mercury to put an end to
her sorrows

whereof he died
of her pockets

      prevented by her
language upon him

© Jeff Encke 2010

American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Bat City Review, Black Warrior Review, Cannibal, Colorado Review, Fence, Kenyon Review Online, Octopus Magazine, Salt Hill, Tarpaulin Sky, and others have published Encke’s poetry. He has taught writing and criticism at Columbia University, where he received a PhD in English in 2003, and Richard Hugo House in Seattle.