'I can't breathe': young Twitter poet gives new voice to Eric Garner

• Jason Fotso’s poem, Last Words, is a response to the no indictment decision
• The Duke University freshman has also written about Ferguson

• Shot in the chest by Cleveland police – then handcuffed and fined $100
• Opinion: I’m black, British and I just moved to New York. I can’t breathe

The last words of Eric Garner, the 43-year-old man who died after being placed in an chokehold by New York police officers in Staten Island in July, have found a new audience on social media, thanks to a teenage poet from Minnesota.

Jason Fotso, 17, from Maple Grove near Minneapolis and now a freshman at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, constructed a poem, Last Words, out of the letters that make up the words said by Garner as he struggled with police in an arrest that was filmed by a passerby.

I – I – I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t be.

You see me.
You see thug.
You see sin.

A poem I wrote about Eric Garner, written solely with rearranged letters from the entirety of his last words. pic.twitter.com/LLhHVCPPlv