"A Small Needful Fact" is one of Ross Gay's most well-known poems. It was originally published by the poetry organization Split This Rock in 2015, and was shared widely across social media. Responding to the murder of Eric Garner at the hands of NYPD officers in 2014, "A Small Needful Fact" confronts the issues of racism and police brutality in such a way that bears witness to Garner's life.
The poem relies on the fact that Garner once worked as a horticulturist for the Parks and Recreation Department and speculates on the way that this work touches the rest of humanity (by making the air easier to breathe). Garner, who died in a chokehold, is witnessed in the context of his life rather than just through the violence of his death.
This event—the chokehold, the eleven pleas for breath, the death—along with other police killings ignited a national movement protesting racism and unjust law enforcement. Protesters around the country carried signs with Garner's last words: "I can't breathe." Gay's widely anthologized poem reckons with the event's political gravity, without sensationalizing the violence of Garner's death or attempting to allegorize him as a saint.
