Brian Boyd gives us an encounter on several levels. First it’s an encounter with history and the existence of palace and ecclesiastical prisons. Then there’s the encounter of the woman with her imprisoned partner and, it turns out, all the other inmates within earshot. Thirdly, there is the speaker witnessing this encounter, which is both intimate with that tu and very public, as the whole prison wing answers her. The speaker is perhaps an “idle tourist,” there for the gardens, but what he witnesses is something very different—the attempt of a couple to stay in contact, despite prison bars, and the woman’s work to keep the father in touch with his child. There is also the woman’s willingness to be “every mother with every child, / every woman, every lover” to those men cut off from their lives. What a beautiful moment of vulnerability and generosity.
Betsy Sholl, MAJ Poetry editor
Brian Boyd writes short fiction, poems, and art journalism. His work has appeared in Litro, The New Yorker, Amjambo Africa, and CAA Reviews. He teaches English in Maine to visitors and immigrants from around the world.
Prison Sainte-Anne, Avignon
Since every palace needs a prison
any visitor to the public gardens
can admire without turning
the crenellated ramparts of the papal seat
and the sere cut stone of old Sainte-Anne.
One day I saw a woman in neon heels
park her stroller on the esplanade.
Sycamores and splintered benches.
She swung her baby on her hip
and let them grasp the iron rail.
Can you sleep? she called
across the concrete gully, diva strong.
Tu, she said, the singular you,
but from a dozen prison windows
came a protest loud enough
to stir the pigeons. She was
no idle tourist, I saw then,
but came here every Sunday,
dressed for church, to show one man
their baby was alive, bright-eyed
and kicking. Do you sleep, she asked,
at night? Though tu she said again,
she seemed content to hear the cries
from every cell and every throat,
serene to be, one day in seven,
every mother with every child,
every woman, every lover.
Image at top: Étienne Martellange, De la ville d’Avignon et par dela: Veüe de la Ville d’Avignon et des Environs (detail), pen and brown in with an Indian ink wash, 15 x 30 in., n.d. Bibliothèque Nationale de France (photo: Wikipedia Commons).