The prisoners were in line at the post office to send in their offerings, the price of freedom in a free land.
The prisoners were in line
at the post office to send
in their offerings, the price
of freedom in a free land.
They didn’t look too good:
they were slope-shouldered
with defeated eyes and the pale
pallor of the sleepless
and abused. No one spoke
but the silence was full of noise,
the sounds of surrender grinding
out that hapless conformity.
I took a deep breath and a step
forward as the line advanced,
happy I wasn’t like one of them,
like a robot dreaming in daylight.
Good Luck in a Bad Place
He’d wake in the middle of the night to see Larry
doing chin-ups off the cell bars.
During the day they sat at a metal table, smoking
and playing cards.
Or he’d watch him pace back and forth, punching
air like a boxer warming up before a fight.
Later, on a beach, a child touches his face and a choir
of gulls sing fabled songs.
Never Saw the Light
San Francisco back in the day,
your mom wheeled past me
at the clinic, a grim smile
pasted on her pale face.
That's when they found you
swimming towards the sun
and without mercy, cut
short your impending
arrival, throwing you back
into the abyss. I wonder
this fine June morning,
decades later, your mom
long gone, how you'd have
changed our lives and how
you would've used yours.
My long-ago vanished son
or daughter, I remember you.
I remember what we did.
