Notes from Exile

Log/Verse: daily reflections from prison, written every morning at my bunk. Part poem, part log book.

Every morning, before work or count, I sat at my bunk and wrote what I called log/verse. I didn’t know iambic pentameter from a weather vane—words just spilled out in primitive forms. These aren’t polished narratives. They’re hybrid scribblings of prose poems and stream-of-consciousness outpourings, meant to overcome the inherent ineffability of the penal experience.

They aim to convey a visceral semblance of prison life—its routines, trauma, and shifting emotional center of gravity. This series shares them as I first wrote them—raw and unedited.

Sentencing Day

Every inmate I see 
for the first
time,
I wonder about their
sentencing
day.

No one shows
it,
but I know each
one of us,
carry that day
like no
other.

The call to stand, the sound
of the courtroom
rising,
the frightening pause
once all are
standing.

The Judge intones
his answer,
torturous moments, almost
in code,
his final revelation of final
and incalculable
despair.

Bunk 1, 5:05 AM