Turner’s lips twitch, his eyebrows go
crazy while he reads Jack Gilbert. I tell
Matthew to think olive, not motor, on the ooze
of oil crushed. Paulie’s a skinny white guy, blond
beard, blue crocheted kufi cap, going to town
on Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas.”
Which is hard to do! I ask Carl who’s the “you”
in “One Art.” Ben’s shaking his head, erasing
all thought on John Clare. Butch just says outstanding
when I ask how he likes Gail Mazur’s “Baseball.”
He beams. They are men alone with poems, last day
of class in jail. Ken saying Jill I can’t do this, I’m no good
with poems. And me saying Ken shut up you give me that
crap every time I give you anything to do. Ken laughs,
admits he gets the poem’s loneliness, knows
what lonely’s like. I broke up with my ex-girlfriend
when I caught this sentence. I roll my eyes and he gets it,
gets that he gets the poem. Last class. Goodbye,
my gentleman felons. Goodbye to their sentences, locked
cabinets of books we’re not allowed to use. Goodbye
dark clothes two sizes too big. Men trying their best, their
beat-up desks. Their glasses and watches, all of us
working together, in the time we have left. Shrugging
at pages, holding their heads in tattooed, winter-dry hands.
Poetry Class in a Massachusetts Prison
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