Nancy Scott

THE HARDEST THING

he tells me about being out
is knowing how and when
to explain to his girlfriend
that he'd killed a man
that he'd borrowed a gun
so he could feel "cool"
that he'd shot the guy
in a spontaneous street brawl
that he'd spent ten years
in prison, even though
the dead man's mother
testified at the trial
that her son was no good
and she was glad he was dead.


Nancy reads "The Hardest Thing":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Nancy confesses: "This young man was a friend of my sons. Had he been white he might have been acquitted, but the prosecutor, who was up for reelection in that state, asked for life in prison to set an example of how young black men needed to be handled."

NANCY SCOTT is the current managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets' Cooperative in New Jersey. She is the author five books of poetry, her most recent, On Location, a collection of ekphrastic poems about works of art, was published by March Street Press in 2011. Her work has appeared in print journals, such as Slant, Mudfish, Witness, and New York Quarterly, and online at Segue, qarrtsiluni, Pemmican, and The BluePrint Review. More at www.nancyscott.net.