Notes from Exile: The News
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. Usually first thing in the morning before reporting for work in the kitchen at 5:15 am.
THE NEWS
You try to keep
up,
especially at
first.
Like a closet door that
locks you
in,
the world’s left you
behind.
The daily papers pass
from bunk to
bunk.
At first you only take
the current
dates.
But less and less
the timing
matters.
Even the events seem less
and less and
less.
You can read more of my log verse, published in Minutes Before Six, a literary journal that publishes writing by formerly incarcerated writers.