Tom Barlow

JEFFREY EPSTEIN SPEAKS FROM THE GRAVE

All night long the con in the next cell
kept whispering to me how easy
it is to hang yourself in jail
how little pain

I told him I once owned my own jet
and used it to bring young lovelies
to my private island
the natives called it the Lolita Express

He told me he once had six country girls
working the truck stops for him and I was a fool
for shopping on Fifth Avenue

I told him Ghislane should not have been
persecuted or prosecuted. She has
no cock and her tongue is beautiful

He said he had to smack his bitch
around a little when she was slow
to bring him a beer

I told him I once had enough money
to buy this prison and tear it down

He told me he held up a Denny's
for eighty-three dollars

I told him about all the movies
I took with my little hidden cameras
starring people in the tabloids

He told me for a pack of cigarettes
he could get me a copy of Hustler

I told him I once had presidents and princes
pining for an invite to my debaucheries

He told me I'd had an audience of inmates
listening to me sob and choke the night I hung myself.
When I fell still, the applause echoed
all the way down to the guard station


Tom's YouTube video reading of "Jeffrey Epstein Speaks from the Grave":



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Tom confesses: "This poem tries to capture the revulsion that the public felt as Epstein's predations were exposed, imagining as I have read that even in prison pedophiles are reviled. Sometimes suicide can leave society feeling that justice was not completely served, that the criminal had chosen the easy way out."

TOM BARLOW is an Ohio writer of poetry, short stories and novels. Other works of his may be found in anthologies including Best American Mystery Stories 2013 and periodicals including Pulp Modern, Heater, Plots With Guns, Mystery Weekly, Needle, Thuglit, Mystery Tribune, Switchblade, and Tough. His noir crime short story collection Odds of Survival is available on Amazon.