Betsy Sholl, MAJ Poetry Editor
Questions about teaching at the Supermax
What do they wear? Those orange clothes?
Only if they’re in trouble, I answer. They wear
jeans, tee shirts, just like anyone else.
They wear their numbers taped on gray sweatshirts.
They wear crucifixes, kufis, and kippahs,
dreadlocks and ponytails and shaved heads. They wear
prayer beads, lockets of their daughter’s hair.
They wear words carved into their skin,
scars from cutting, from shanks, from needle marks.
They wear white socks, sometimes blue button-down shirts
for visits or special occasions, like class presentations.
They wear their childhoods, their years in juvi, years in solitary,
their bodies hard from years of sleeping on thin mats,
from years of eating fake food, from fear.
They wear their sentences, words like regret, shame,
syllables and decades that all taste the same.
Those Shoes
Before you (re)judge a prisoner,
imagine
a toddler standing in his crib
rattling the bars of his cage.
No one comes. He screams
until his tiny throat is scratched,
his nose clogged
with snot and tears and
the refuse of abandonment.
No one comes.
Imagine,
his heart rate quickening
with the heavy footsteps
in the hall, the flood of light
when his bedroom door swings
open in the night, the father’s
bourbon breath, the fierce
penetration. There was no
pretending then.
Imagine,
the foster home that only fostered
Fear. Rooms of unwanted boys,
sad food, stained sheets,
convulsions of loneliness,
craters of despair
and no one to hear.
Imagine, then,
the urgency of peer pressure,
the imperative to “Man Up,”
just do it, don’t be a wuss,
a faggot, a girl, the con-
sequences of failure –
Social death and more.
Sirens come calling.
Imagine
the sweet relief that follows
the needle’s deep journey
through skin into a vein,
the plunger’s delicate pressure
soon delivers the escape.
Cloudscapes, kaleidoscopes, church bells.
Love, Love, Love.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Before you judge a prisoner,
imagine
the sounds of hydraulic locks,
the finality of their closure,
the frightful tomb of solitude.
In the next cell someone howls
like a wolf and soon others
are baying through the steel
bars to the bored florescent moon.
Still, no one listens.
Who can walk in those shoes?
They Say
What you have heard about us is not true.
We are not all savages, carrying shanks,
anger pumping through our veins.
I practice yoga, say my prayers, fast during Ramadan.
We are not all savages, carrying shanks.
I learned how to read in English,
I practice yoga, say my prayers, fast during Ramadan.
I just finished reading Jane Eyre.
I’ve learned how to read in English,
and write – letters and poems.
I just finished reading Jane Eyre,
We’re like orphans too, in here.
I write – letters and poems.
I was a dying flower that was watered and now blooms.
Though we’re like orphans in here,
I’ve never been more at peace.
I was a dying flower that was watered and now blooms.
I teach yoga in the hole, what we call solitary.
I’ve never been more at peace.
Some guys are in a cage but I can show them the poses.
I teach yoga in the hole, what we call solitary.
The guys wait for me to come every day.
Some guys are in a cage but I can show them the poses.
I teach them how to breath, deep, from the belly.
The guys wait for me to come every day.
Child’s pose is very calming.
I teach them how to breathe, deep, from the belly.
They are calmer, I can see it.
Child’s pose is very calming,
No anger is pumping through our veins.
They are calmer, I can see it.
What you have heard about us is not true.