Notes from Exile: Memory
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 spilled out in primitive forms. These aren’t polished narratives. They’re hybrid scribblings of prose poems and stream-of-consciousness outpourings, designed to overcome the inherent ineffability of the penal experience, convey some visceral semblance of the trauma, and more effectively communicate an inmate's day-to-day reality and true center of gravity. This series shares them as I first wrote them.
MEMORY
They say you get
stupid in
prison.
The most familiar
words,
on the tip of your
tongue,
your best friends
name,
your daughters
age,
your address at
home,
the year you were
married,
like chalk on your
brain.
One thing you never
forget,
the day you
arrived.
I love the free verse here...it seems to "fit" as an antithesis to closed form poetry and the confines of the "rules." You seem to tap into the reality of living in prison in vivid, astonishing ways. Susan L