Day 20 in the X House

  Suza wrote: (Transcribed by Arrolyn Vernon) 

                                                                                                         Suza Lambert Bowser

                                                                        Dwight Maximum Security- Feb 18, 2013

“Day 20 in the X House”

Post prandial, we walk from the dining hall in two lines

Wearing the deep yellow and royal maroon of Tibetan monks.

Razor wire slices crystalline blue into icy splinters of light,

And the prison grass glitters flawed diamonds.      

The sun is winter weak, but the wind is strong enough to prick my skin.

I pivot on this compass point- awry- then,

Alighned beneath a lopsided minim, beyond the fence,

A gas station pulses red, white, and blue- blinking

With an off-handed unobtainable liberty:

            Eighteen wheelers, SUVs, prison guards, coffee, tobacco,

            Cornucopias of candy, sour wieners, beer, farmers,

            Factory workers, toothless Midwesterners- and the beat goes on.

For one brief chilly moment my vision is as spherical and clear

As the shimmering chain link that contains me.

I don’t want to be in this prisona, but I don’t want to be

In that convenient mart either.

An unseen train plays jazz- spotless and concise…

A C Major 7^th cleaves the air and reorganizes my brain.