Notes from Exile: The Shoe

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

In Prison Camp, I described federal camp as structured, survivable , even human in unexpected ways. And in this week’s Justice Notes, Stuart Anderson explored solitary confinement as a form of engineered isolation.

But the Shoe (solitary confinement) is how you are introduced to incarceration. This entry from Notes from Exisle was written after I emerged from those first days in solitary. I chose the stream of consicousness form to communicate the breathless, falling down a well trauma all inmates experience in solitary confinrment.

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THE SHOE (Solitary Confinement)

A frightening place they take you unawares on your first day to a dungeon-like solitary cell with dirt and slimy film on every surface and handcuffed and pummeled into an orange jumpsuit and profane shouts from guards with tattoos and beards who look more like inmates than guards and you think there’s been some mistake and you can’t get out because you don’t know where you are or how you got there except having been escorted there pushed and shoved down a long line of steel doors with tiny windows and frightening faces looking out at you like murderers who have been promised a meal and you’re the meal and then after several days and nights
with no sleep because a cold vent blows 24/7 to keep the cell meat-locker cold with ceaseless sound of groans and moans from the other cells and the lights blink from time to time but never go out but finally after three days someone opens the door and you finally see the light of day again but he gives you a green unifom to “put this on asshole” and you’re now branded as an official criminal and inmate.

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For readers interested in longer reflections on justice, incarceration, and exile, my essays are linked here at Minutes Before Six..

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