Steel doors retracting, it was all routine protocols
until the CO, patting me down, said, “Our job’s
to hide things, your job’s to make ’em better criminals.”
I stood in front of the blackboard. But before
we could get down to it, Maurice said, looking
at life without parole, “Tom, I’ve been in here
since I was sixteen and this year
I turned thirty-seven. It takes a long time
to get used to taking shits without a stall door
and with a guard staring right at you so you get
shit-shy and no matter how bad you need to go
you can’t go. After a while your thoughts
just don’t have the energy to climb the wall.”
And then we all talked about “The Emperor
of Ice Cream” and someone said, “In the funeral
this Stevens guy really gets it. The only reason
you got flowers is to cover up the dead person’s smell.”
Waiting for the lamp to affix its beam,
who wasn’t an emperor of ice cream?
When the men filed out, the too-bright glare brimming
over plastic chairs wiped from the classroom
any trace of shadow and brought to light hovering,
composite ghosts: year after year, acids, oils
from skin and hair etched faint auras on the walls.
—Tom Sleigh
Tom Sleigh, author of The King’s Touch, is an award-winning poet, journalist, and essayist. He is the author of eleven books of poetry and has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and Africa.