Rodney Gomez

WEEPING [I DECIDED I WOULD MOUNT MY OWN DEFENSE]

I decided I would mount my own defense. Everyone advised me against it. I wasn’t a lawyer. But who else could serve as my advocate? At its climax, the trial hung on this: a table placed before the witness stand, several objects on it but no names. I held up each item and asked the arresting officer: what is this? A frayed dish rag: a child. The tip of a reed: a baby. Tuft of horsehair: a boy. Marble: a girl. An ebony pod: a seed, but he insisted it becomes a tree. I asked him, not at all rhetorically: and what about me? Can I not also become a tree?

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