PCC INSCAPE MAGAZINE
  • 2020 Summer Folio
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    • INT - Adrian Cepeda Poet of the Year 2019
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    • 2020 February Folio
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    • Celebrating Dia De Los Muertos
    • Issue On-7 2019SPR Mental Health Companion >
      • Issue Intro
    • ISSUE ON-6 2018FA Frankenstein Companion
    • Issue On-5 - 2018Su
    • Issue On-4 2018FA Spirituality
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    • Folio 1 - Vote - 2018
  • PRINT ARCHIVE
    • Fall 2018 Print Issue - Frankenstein TOC
    • Fall 2017 Print Issue - Manifesto TOC

Need to Testify

A poem by Brandon Cesmat

The some of the how is that I couldn’t pull the trigger, not because I couldn’t kill him, but
because he had a woman, not my wife, with him. How many times have we sung along, “Can I get a
witness?” when in fact we are the witness, but don’t know what we see and how it fits a need? So when
I took his loaded, unlocked forty-five from beside his bed after reading her messages on his unlocked
phone, I walked down the road and locked his gate so when he got out to spin in the combo, I could step
from behind the trees. Kneecap or skull, I hadn’t decided, so the silhouette of a woman with hair not-
my-wife’s saved his life and his knee. Motive anew, stay free to tell the truth, witness like a bullet that
he had other business, and I had none other than her, that all that’s left after long life is love, and love is
like real estate: location, location, location. I’m finding ways to be beside, beside, beside, around,
​around, around.

Brandon Cesmat teaches at CSUSM and his books include When Pigs Fall in Love and Light in All Directions.
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  • 2020 Summer Folio
  • About
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Feral Parrot : The Blog
  • Submissions
  • Awards & Prizes
    • Handley Award Winners
    • 2019 Inscape Editor's Prizes
  • PCC Inscape Instagram
  • STAFF 2021
    • STAFF - Winter 2020
    • Fall 2020 STAFF Q&A
    • staff-SPRING 2019
    • Staff-SPRING 2018
    • Staff -FALL 2018
    • Staff -FALL 2017
  • Interviews
    • INT - Adrian Cepeda Poet of the Year 2019
    • INT-Visiting Writer Wendy Adamson FA2019
  • ONLINE ARCHIVE
    • 2020 February Folio
    • 2019 Fall Folio
    • Celebrating Dia De Los Muertos
    • Issue On-7 2019SPR Mental Health Companion >
      • Issue Intro
    • ISSUE ON-6 2018FA Frankenstein Companion
    • Issue On-5 - 2018Su
    • Issue On-4 2018FA Spirituality
    • Issue ON-3 2017FA
    • Issue On-2 2016SPR
    • Issue ON-1 2016FA
    • Folio 2 - Moon Moon 2019
    • Folio 1 - Vote - 2018
  • PRINT ARCHIVE
    • Fall 2018 Print Issue - Frankenstein TOC
    • Fall 2017 Print Issue - Manifesto TOC