and gardens of roses and morning orchids.
I know you, little one, my trait is dominant, but to you
I am a grain of salt, a small spark lost in a blaze.
If I kneel and ask you to stare into my eyes,
what would you say? Would Father slip through your thin
lips?
Would your arms circle my neck? Would you kiss my cheek?
In dreams you smile at me
and ask me to recite old poems
that mean little to some
but the world to you. You
clap your hands to clouds and laugh at dawn’s snowflakes.
Have I told you no flake is the same?
Have I told you no life is the same?
Have I told you no pain is the same?
There you go, slipping by the monkey cage and clowns.
I watch you go the way you never saw me arrive, face flush
and full of confusion. I may have given you life, may have been
that small angel who breathes life into puppets, but now I am
only a stranger, lost in his strange world of words and woes.
1996, Otisville Correctional Facility
Otisville, New York
After My Arrest
Judith Clark
among the everyday
pieces lost
a bright pink Indian cotton shirt
worn through months of
nursing, quickly unbuttoned
to bring the rooting baby to my breast
her head in its
soft, filmy folds
set adrift among the debris
of police searches, overturned lives
tossed into a pile of orphaned clothes
and taken to a tag sale
where my friend,
recognizing it,
bought it
to keep me close
and wore it one day
to bring my daughter for a visit,
greeting me cheerfully,
“Remember this?”
and I laughed,
scooping up my baby
to carry her into the
toy-filled playroom
where she rode me, her horsey
among the oversized stuffed animals
until visiting hours were over
when I stood at that great divide,
the visitor’s exit gate,
and watched my shirt and my child
leave
with my friend
1996, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
Bedford Hills, New York
To Vladimir Mayakovsky†
Judith Clark
History
has been unkind to you
Mayakovsky
making fools
or lunatics of
us
who chased the rainbow
blinded by its shimmering radiance
fading
like dreams disappearing
into morning
Your life a warning:
poets who would be prophets
may lose their lyrics
their lives
History’s stern judgments:
he sold his soul to dictators
his craft to technocrats
he loved too much he loved too little
he gave in
he gave up
Today
the New World you championed
the dreams I fought for
are consigned to history books
written
in black and white
bereft of poems
A middle school teacher
in America
wraps it up neatly, to his pupils
in one simple sentence:
Communism was bad
from start to finish
bad and it lost.
A child
stands
hands on hips
chin out in challenge:
“That’s your opinion
and too simple
My grandparents were Communists
It was an idea a dream
People tried
but they made mistakes
It’s not so simple as good and bad.”
In the prison visiting room
the child looks her mother
in the eye. She says,
“Your intentions were good
but you went about them
wrongly.”
And I
her mother
who grew up
dancing
to your rhythms and rhymes
Mayakovsky
then plunged
from poetry
to war
find my way back
to you
Reading your rebellious lyrics
I contemplate your end
Mayakovsky
caught
in the iron jaws of history
and your own intimate demons
This I know:
despite my failures and defeats
my sorry solitude
the burden of guilt
and the death of dreams
despite the cold of a winter morning
waking to cinderblock walls and
rows of barbed wire
robbed
of every warm blanket
of illusion
Still
I crave life
Mayakovsky
child
poems
dreams
1993, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
Bedford Hills, New York
A Trilogy of Journeys
Kathy Boudin
for my son on turning 18
I.
The day approaches
when I begin
my yearly pilgrimage
back in time,
the present no longer important,
only the exact hour and minutes on a clock.
They will bring me to that moment
when you began
the longest journey
man ever makes,
out of the sea that
rocked you and bathed you,
out of the darkness and warmth
that caressed you,
out of the space
that you stretched like the skin of a drum
until it could no longer hold you
and you journeyed through my tunnel
with its twists and turns,
propelling yourself
on and on until
your two feet danced into brightness
and you taught me
the meaning
of miracles.
II.
Somewhere in the middle of the country
you are driving a car,
sitting straight, seat belt tight across your well-exercised chest,
looking into the horizon,
the hum of the engine dwarfed by the
laughter of your companions.
You are driving toward 18.
Two sets of parents
on each side of the continent
await your arrival,
anxiously,
And you leave them astounded
by that drive,
always part of you,
to grow up as soon as possible.
You move toward the point
that as parents we both celebrate and dread,
foreshadowed by leavings that take place
over and over again.
That leaving for kindergarten,
that leaving for camp,
that leaving parents home on a Saturday night.
Until that time when you really leave,
which is the point of it all,
And the sweet sadness.
III.
My atlas sits
on a makeshift desk,
a drawing board
between two lock-boxes.
It was a h
ard-fought-for item,
always suspect in the prison environment
as if I couid slide into its multicolored shapes
and take a journey.
In front of me is the United States
spread across two pages.
I search for Route 80,
a thin red line
and imagine you,
a dot moving along it.
You, an explorer now.
Davenport, Iowa; Cheyenne, Wyoming; then Utah; Nevada;
until you reach
the Sierras, looking down on the golden land.
Roads once traveled by your father and me.
As I struggle within myself to let you go,
and it is only within,
for you will go,
I am lifted out of the limits
of this jail cell,
and on the road
with you, my son,
who more than any map or dream
extends my world.
My freedom may be limited,
but I am your passenger.
1998, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
Bedford Hills, New York
The World
“The real world” some prisoners call it ironically. Some say, as our soldiers did in Vietnam, “back in the world.” Extracted from it, prisoners have a unique perspective on “the world.”
In Paul St. John’s 1994 story “Behind the Mirror’s Face” (Reading and Writing), the narrator asserts that prison marks most inmate writing, and for the worse. “A con may write fiction, but everybody will know where it comes from. His fiction wears the stink of prison for a belt. Her fiction is pregnant with loss disguised as possibility. His outlaws always get the better of a wicked status quo. Her heroines grope through a jungle of shame for their stolen womanhood, and perhaps a piece of heaven.” Certainly a portion of PEN contest entries support this charge. Every year men send pieces about the perfect crime, the foiled execution, the superhero’s ultimately satisfying revenge; and the “stink of prison” is inescapable in the uncen-sored wet dreams and virulent misogynist fantasies (sometimes merged} sent to the contest. Some of the writing by women is freighted with longing; some return relentlessly to scenes of loss and betrayal.
With a passion born of desperation, St. John’s narrator cries, “Take this goddamned place out of your art is what I am trying to tell you all.” The best writing about “the world” is neither stuck in the groove of crime-guilt-loss-revenge nor wheeling free in the fantasy of might-have-been. Not imprisoned, it yet bears the mark of the journey the prisoner has taken. Writers who have come to terms with who and where they are effect a triumph over those conditions. They use insight gained in “that goddamned place” to engage and illuminate the so-called real world outside — neither in an exculpatory nor an accusatory way, but by naming the human bonds that link us all. Thus, in “Prisons of Our World,” Allison Blake’s bid in prison gives her piercing insight into the social and psychological captivity her “free” neighbors cannot see. Robert Moriarty’s “Pilots in the War on Drugs” draws us into the romantic cockpit of perilous entrepreneur-ship and goes on to show how everything in our disingenuous war on drugs has driven pilots first to the air and, if they survive, to prison, scapegoats for a problem he can see, but the general public can’t or won’t.
The world seen through the prism of incarceration is cleansed of illusions and often startlingly unconventional. The hiphop poem by J. L. Wise Jr., “No Brownstones, Just Alleyways 5c Corner Pockets Full,” renders the cauldron of a St. Louis ghetto summer night, where lurking disaster coexists with resilient vitality. In “Americans,” Jon Schillaci celebrates our polyglot, postmodern society for its very confusions. In “For Sam Manzie,” his empathy becomes an ethical challenge to media-dulled citizens; it is the poet’s searing response to a Newsweek article about boy-killer Sam Manzie, who had himself been seduced over the Internet. “Diner at Midnight,” an Edward Hopper-like sketch by David Taber, limns a moment of failed empathy. In a retake of the diner scene in “The Film,” the protagonist willfully wipes out feeling for both waitress and himself, as he fashions himself, in a sinisterly all-American way, the hero in a typical thriller. And the late Henry Johnson, a saxophone player, offers a thrilling riff on a real murder (of jazz musician Lee Morgan by his ex-wife in Slug’s Saloon), set in a glamorized “5-Spot Cafe.”
The stink of prison is converted into a gift of pure imaginative transcendence in a sequential pair of stories by J. C. Amberchele. He traces a victim’s ongoing quest to understand and master what has happened to her. A sensitive and idiosyncratic loner, Melody hardens, after her brush with murder, into Mel, a woman driven to recover her life by reinventing it. The very creation of this remarkable figure is a gesture toward redemption, extending imaginatively as it does to the other side of crime. Mel’s preoccupation with her would-be murderer, speechless as a result of childhood trauma, makes her in some way his double, seeking a way to master, by encountering again, their shared horrific past.
Prisons of Our World
Allison Blake
Mrs. Hennessy is getting a manicure
No matter her husband loves her no more
Been vain and spoiled so long
Can’t leave these comforts now
Love is the only sacrifice it seems
Now she finds it in her dreams.
Sarah was to be a great artist
Her talents were noticed years ago
The street life smothered her dream
Now she lives in the could-have-been
Wonders each night if it should-have-been
Too afraid to think of the would-have-been.
Harry reaches for the bottle
Can’t get through the night without it
Colorful pictures dangle before him
Floating in unison with the sounds in his head
Can’t turn the music off now
It starts and stops without him.
Little Mary is hiding in the cellar
Doesn’t want her daddy to find her
Still hurting from last night’s beating
Can’t figure yet why it happened
Plans to run away as soon as she’s grown
Like Big Sister who works for Big Eddie.
We stand alone in the prison of our space.
1995, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
Bedford Hills, New York
Pilots in the War on Drugs
Robert J. Moriarty
The brutal midday Caribbean sun beats down on the two men sweltering in their cockpit that long ago turned into an oven. Sweat drips down the captain’s chin as he patiently waits for the ground crew to finish loading his cargo. His eyes scan all quadrants of the sky, looking for unfriendly visitors. The rear cargo door slams shut with a dull thunk. The chief of his loading crew moves out to the left wing and smiles a shy grin as he passes a thumbs-up, a slight salute to the captain.
The pilot gently, smoothly pushes the throttles forward to their stops while firmly holding the brakes. His eyes make a quick pass over the engine gauges in a final check. His partner, occupying the right seat, makes a hurried, nervous sign of the cross. Glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes, the pilot cannot prevent a slight look of disdain from crossing his features.
Takeoff is always the critical point in these flights. Off to the side of the runway lie the crumpled remains of the planes that almost made it. This runway would never qualify for any I;AA safety awards. The pilot doesn’t even want to think about what happened to the crews of the mangled pieces of aluminum. He releases the brakes abruptly. Slowly, almost too slowly, the airplane starts its takeoff roll. Time seems to stretch to eternity. Rumbling and bouncing slightly, the aircraft accelerates down the narrow dirt strip hacked from a long-forgotten jungle. Infinity passes as the far end of the runway grows more distinct.
No flight manual covers takeoff in 100-degrees Fahrenheit heat with an overburdened aircraft powered
by long-past-prime twin engines. The airspeed indicator limps clockwise a knot or so at a time. Flying speed may just be a few knots past eternity. Mentally the pilot prays the load is far enough forward in the cabm to still be within the aircraft flight envelope. He will know for sure in a few seconds.
As the end of the runway passes beneath the nose of the plane, he smoothly eases the yoke back. Fie rolls a smidgen of elevator trim then quickly pops the landing gear handle upward. It isn’t worth his time to snatch a quick peek at the airspeed indicator. Hither he has flying speed or not. A slight increase in drag from the gear doors open ing causes the aircraft to settle slightly.
The aircraft climbs upward a few inches at a time. As it bounces through slight turbulence, the stall warning horn bleeps its sound of terror. Flying a plane under these conditions is a lot like making love to a lady gorilla. The pilot eases his aluminum chariot into a gentle turn to the north. He sets the cowl flaps to the trail position and gently pulls the props back to climb power. Just to be safe, he turns the transponder switch to the left one more time and rechecks that the circuit breaker has been pulled. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to get caught because the transponder somehow was left on.
Another planeload of drugs is on its way into the United States.
When the plane finally reaches cruising altitude cool enough to ride in comfort but low enough to evade radar, he sets the power to the maximum endurance setting. A few thousand feet below, the haze layer ever present over the ocean marks the boundary between turbulence and smooth air. The pilot turns to his still nervous assistant. “Reach in the back and see if any of the soda is still cold.” As his partner turns to the rear of the plane to complete his assignment, the pilot muses to himself. Wonder if that bozo realized how dumb it is to distract a pilot during a takeoff like that? Now and again he scans the engine gauges. The left engine runs pretty hot but at this weight it isn’t the critical engine any longer. Each engine is critical. If one quits or sputters, his aluminum butterfly will turn rapidly into a submarine. The pilot comforts himself with the thought of paper bags filled with cash. The hard work, the dangerous work has all been left behind at the jungle strip.
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