Yellow Mama E zine
Issue #118
October 15th, 2026
The Sacrifice of Bicycles: Poem by John C. Mannone
Art by John C. Mannone © 2026
The Sacrifice of Bicycles
by John C. Mannone
By the riverbank, two bikes piled on each other,
the third fifty feet away up the trail, its tracks
stopped dead. A blue baseball cap, spectacles
ditched in the copper brown basswood leaves.
The hounds scented for the boys, keen, unerring,
sniffed the water’s edge, stopped where the sun’s
slant through the trees dissolved into shadows.
Stream water sloshed a couple of crushed beer cans
clinking their metal together with water-filled thuds
intruding the natural sounds of the woods. Gurgles
of water indifferent over a clump of fallen poplars
straddling the muddy banks, betrayed its own
serenity with an elegy—the way something caught
in the twigs flutters in the water—a white cotton
T-shirt snagged on storm-fallen limbs, blooming
a bearded iris’ red brown, or a deeper shade of red,
Arkansas clay but better boasting the insipid color
of death. The three young boys, naked, weighted
down into a river-grave with a sack of sad rocks
crying out from the depths, giving voice to them
whose tongues had been tied in a devil’s knot,
their mouths full of mud silencing their prayers.
Author’s Notes and Backstory: Though heavily influenced by actual events—by the murder of three 8-year-old boys (Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers in West Memphis, AR, May 5, 1993)—most of this poem was written without fidelity to the actual details and doesn’t allude to, nor exclude, satanic practices.
The movie, “Devil’s Knot,” which is based on Mara Leveritt’s book, The Devil’s Knot, is also only 42% accurate. The title metaphorically alludes to the tangled and intricate details of the case for the prosecution of the so-called West Memphis Three, teenagers who allegedly were part of a sadistic, ritualistic satanic cult who committed the murders. An arguably wrongful prosecution by unreliable witnesses and public fears fueling a witch hunt means that the complete truth may never be known.
In the movie, there were two bikes and three boys, who were found bound, beaten, mutilated, and sodomized; their bodies anchored in 2- to 3-ft of muddy water past the Black Train Bridge by Devil’s Bend in Robin Hood Hills Creek. (The bikes were also in the creek: Stevie’s bike had red top and down tubes; Mike’s was grayish blue). The three victims, as depicted in the movie, were Stevie, a blond-hair boy in a white T-shirt; Mike in a blue Cub Scout uniform with his brown hair stuffed under his cap; and Chris, a light-red-headed boy, also in a white shirt.
The search party located the boys (not dogs) when a deputy found a floating black shoe. Subsequently, he found the naked bodies and most of their clothes (not their underwear, which leads me to suspect it was the work of serial killers/pedophiles keeping trophies.) The two bikes were also felt by the deputy’s probing the silty water.
The poem implies the murders were committed by one or two pedophiles, perhaps celebrating their evil deeds with cans of beer. Ironically, bicycles in general symbolize progress, renewal, and of promising times ahead.
Image: A peaceful stream (Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, TN jpeg) is combined with the black spray painting of three bicycle riders (Oak Ridge, TN; background stripped png). Photography and Photo-art Credit: John C. Mannone
John C. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, New England Journal of Medicine, and others. Awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature, he has six chapbooks and five full-length collections, the latest, Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024), was a top-eight finalist for the 2025 Tennessee Book Award. He’s a professor of physics who loves to teach science, math, and creative writing whenever the opportunity arises. He’s the recently appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (2026-2028).