At Risk or The Case of the Blue Sleeping Pills

Found Poem # 17: At Risk or The Case of the Blue Sleeping Pills

A 4-year-old Brooklyn girl
Who weighed 18 pounds
Was found
DEAD last month

With toxic levels
Of antihistamines in her system,
Her death has been ruled
A homicide.

In a criminal complaint
Filed last month, prosecutors
Outlined a litany of abuse
That they said
The girl, Marcella Pierce, suffered
In her final days
At the hands of her mother.

Ms. Brett-Pierce
Repeatedly
Struck the girl
With a belt and video box
At their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The mother
Lashed the girl to a bed
with twine
And forced her to take
blue sleeping pills,

The complaint added.

A caseworker and a supervisor
In the Brooklyn field office
Of the children’s services agency
Appeared not to have visited the girl
Or her family
For months — despite indications
That she was
At risk.

Source: The New York Times, October 30, 2010