DNA Traces
did he live here
there
he tended gardens
the cadaver dogs
are nosing the rose bushes
the lilacs
he planted here
there
each was his place
refuge or hideaway
haven or grave
the men who know
will only talk
if their bones are found
traces of their dna
say
we were here
there
we now live in a digital world
symbols
of the discarded
the disappeared
never to be reported
not missed until
their remains were found
men with hidden sexuality
now with hidden bones
senses of self
some homeless
before they were lifeless
cadaver dogs are on the trail
some families still deny
their complicity
in a culture
denies its complicity
shaming sexuality into hiding
long before those bones
were stripped of flesh
before being hidden
perhaps
never to be found here
there
This is one of several pieces I wrote in response to the search & capture of the serial killer of gay men. Other pieces looked at the media response to the search, others to the denial that there was even a serial killer. Part of that inability/unwillingness was due the the social status of many of the victims. By social status I mean homelessness or immigrant. If you are homeless no notices you are gone.
As the piece says some weren’t missing until their remains were found. Some remains were of men reported missing but whose closeted culture didn’t include their sexuality. The murderer was found when he killed a white male who had people who missed him immediately. They were unafraid of immigration policies, weren’t so imitated by police, that they reported him missing.
Their insistence & persistence – putting up posters, searching themselves – lead to the eventual capture of the murderer. The murderer preyed not only on these’s men sexuality but also the shame that kept, for some of them, their sexuality a secret from families & friends. They were murdered a much by that culture of shame as they were by the actual hands of the killer.
The vicitms: Selim Esen, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majeed Kayhan, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Andrew Kinsman, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam
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