Watching Ravens

I pass the sign warning that anyone beyond this point should be prepared to be searched, or, in Spanish, “revisado.” I like that idea better. I should be prepared to be revised. First drafts only up to this point. From here on, you need to focus and figure out what the hell it is you want to say, to do, and to act for a reason. Nobody except students writes for no reason other than his or her own.

The tubs are heavy with writing pads, pens, some magazines, a few books of poetry, copies of inmate drafts that we will discuss. I set the clear tubs down on the steel table so the guard can go through and check for contraband. All of it is contraband, really, but usually the guard just sifts through the pads, shuffles a few pages of the books to make sure they are not hollowed out. He has no interest and likely thinks this stuff is worthless, harmless, and a bit eccentric, if not insane. Why would anyone, including inmates want to sit down and write only to have others critique it? The best outcome is that the work might show up in an obscure journal somewhere, just another crazy poem or story that weirdos would read.

Or at least that’s what I think when I look at his face. I see a faint disgust mixed with bewilderment. Normally, he replaces the lids, and I walk through the metal detector to pick up the tubs on the other side. From here I have only to pass through the sally port and then I am in. I go through this every Saturday, and watch but keep my thoughts to myself. I am lucky and familiar enough that all of this protocol is routine. I see myself on the other side already, under the roof, next to the shoe-shine station, waiting for my ride.

There I will catch a bus and head on over to the Rincon Unit, a two minute ride from the main gate. I will hear the electronic locks snap open, like a bullet being chambered. I will show my badge through the half-inch thick, mirrored security glass and the invisible guard on the other side will open the sliding electric door, clearing my path to the yard and the Education Building.

Musing on my near future, I wait, ready to move the tubs, to feel my fingernails bend under the weight of them. When the guard signals me to lift the lids and stand back, I do, before unloading my pockets of glasses, pen, clip-on badge that allows me clearance, car keys, and any loose change. I am ready to go through the metal detector when he asks me for the memo. I am snapped out of reverie.

“What memo?” I ask.

“Your personal property memo that lists everything you are taking in to the units.”

I don’t have this.

“I have never been asked for a memo before. This is for the creative writing workshops. We’ve been running them for a long time.”

“You can’t take anything in that is not accounted for, and you need to bring it all back out with you.”

“They need paper and pens to write during the week so we can workshop on Saturdays. I have to leave them pads and folders.”

“Nothing is allowed in that doesn’t come back out.”

I think this is some kind of glitch, so ask to see a supervisor. The guard says she will contact the sergeant, before re-entering the control room. She points to a bench that looks like some detention site. This is where the drug sniffing dogs usually wait between checking visitors for drugs.

I wait forty five minutes. The sergeant, a blonde, heavy set woman, emerges from a gray office complex, and walks, with a slight swagger, toward me. I can see a trace of irritation in her face. I explain that the materials are for the writing workshop and that I take them in every week and leave them with the inmates.

“I’m sorry. But you cannot leave anything with the inmates.” She looks at me, but doesn’t look at me, and is reciting policy. It’s her job.

“You can’t go in with anything not on your list. You won’t be able to go in today.”

I can tell she is hoping that I will give up, go back to the car with my tubs, and go home. I decide to bargain, and ask if I can take in a file with copies of a poem by Sandra Alcosser, a poet who is coming in as a guest speaker in a couple of weeks.

“We need to read samples of her work,” I say matter-of-factly. Both of them look at me and each other. I keep going and offer to take the tubs back to the car as a concession, going in with only my fig leaf of a file folder.

They consent. “But only this once,” as a way of winning this battle, of teaching me to submit.

So I take my contraband back to the car, lock it up, and return for my revision. I pass through the metal detector and the electric doors of the sally port and enter the yard. I will have to figure this one out.

I count thirty-two ravens in a cottonwood tree over the DA, the Dining Area, as I walk from the gate to the Education Building in the Rincon Unit. Ravens whistle above me as they negotiate the gusty breezes. They seem to like the razor wire and the dead trees, the military lettering of the buildings – HU5 – the strafed austerity of the recreation area. I like them. They mock us humans and our folly even as they benefit from our trash and discards. They are not proud and take none of this seriously. OK, I say to myself, so that’s the way it is. Fly high enough not to get caught and keep your eyes on the cottonwood. If you’re lucky, no one will shoot you down.

Prison Writing Workshop

Eleven ravens roost

in a winter cottonwood

wind slices through

my jacket as the lock

snaps shut

fingers strain at the weight

of papers and books

and pens and notepads

and other dangerous characters

as a man lights his cigarette

on an electrical coil

wired to a steel post

a bare grey stump

bleaches in the sun

mute now

no breeze can stir the leaves

it used to offer as shade

and here in this

clear unforgiving

light

no one

can hide or run

but a man can refuse

square one of

a new year

a blank page waits

for the story

that will mark the passing

of steps in hopeless time

snow shimmers on the mountain

far beyond the confining wire

one by one the ravens

lift into the wind and are carried

on the words

thrown down like dice

in this the last and

only chance to

harvest new truths

born of an

impossible heart.