Notes from Exile: Laughter
Log/Verse: daily reflections from prison, written every morning at my bunk. Part poem, part log book.
Last week my brother reminded me that I used to write humorous food reviews. “We miss him,” he said.
His comment stayed with me. Prison was often lonely, frightening, and tedious, but it wasn’t without laughter. In fact, there was a surprising amount of it. Most people imagine prison as a place without humor. The reality is more complicated. We laughed often, especially at the endless stories we told one another. Those stories became a kind of currency, a way to pass the time, to remember who we had been, and, for a few moments, to forget where we were.
This poem grew out of that realization.
LAUGHING
There is laughing
in prison,
lots of it.
At times it’s just another
workplace.
But more stories
than jokes.
All fear the punch line
of an ill-timed
joke,
while the stories
leave us
laughing.
They’re really all
we have.
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