The Sunshine State
Peter Neil Carroll

A woman in Florida named Sunny
lived in a box,
Jesse lived in a box, too,
350 miles from Sunny
in another prison.
Man and wife,
they had secrets,

they invented language indecipherable
to literates who read their mail:
an inverted postage stamp signaled
a bad day;
a missing p in a word like people hinted
of something much desired;
the omitted period at letter’s end
sang like a coda of desire.
Convicted killers, sentenced to death
but first to life
in a steel box,
their denials, appeals,
sixteen years of life
on death row proved—

must prove—
they are unrepentant, liars.
Jesse got justice first, strapped to the seat,
a switch shut, the rush of voltage,
appliances do not always work,
fifteen minutes,
time to burn the porterhouse steak,

before Jesse’s brains caught fire
blue smoke rushed from his ears,
his nose,
a semaphore to misguided youth.
Sunny’s turn came next, but
hidden documents--hidden by whom?--
affidavits signed years earlier

revealed
Sunny and Jesse absolved
of murder
they did not commit.
Lucky Sunny,
twenty years in the box,
free.

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