Chokehold
“I can’t breathe!”
Eric Garner’s last words,
gasped as Officer Pantaleo’s hands
squeezed his windpipe shut.
“I can’t breathe,” Garner pleaded
as he died, begging—
every cell in his body
screaming for oxygen.
“No reasonable cause,”
said the D.A.,
when the grand jury choked on logic
refusing to indict even though
the medical examiner ruled
Garner’s death a homicide.
“I can’t breathe!”
protesters chanted.
“This fight ain’t over, it just begun,”
said Esaw Garner. In her voice
I hear every cell in her body
screaming, begging, pleading for justice.
eeo 