This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Mule Creek.
Corona Confusion (by Prison Poet)
Now that we seem powerless,
they eat the rulebook
with all its
decorative oaths.
Their hands also touch.
Some do more
a small glance spun
from eye to badge,
enflamed by
drunk ache in bone.
Conceivable
that one, that young one
he pats him down,
not searched
that scared one, him,
that one, that’s his
himless scratch
his daily itch
made it much more penetrable.
Joe K.: inmate 66
“him” don’t know what to do,
‘he’ took “his,”
he lost it: youngster, don’t wash
evidence inside
while outside,
with smooth efficiency,
a microbe is killing
more Americans,
in America,
than 9/11,
9 times the death
by 11 times the rate,
and still increasing.
Even Joe K. Sr.,
in dismantled breaths,
unmasked,
ascends
from the Tomb of Was.
The LVN heard him go, silent alone
survivor of 9/11: victim of COVID-19
killed by a germ.
That night, he arrives.
The same cop,
(who took his),
stood outside the cell
and told him: “Hey,
your daddy’s dead.
Corona got him.”
Like a child, Joe K.,
even to the eye,
in words that whine
and find no history,
through all he felt
recalcitrant & bemused,
barely whinnied:
“My old man don’t drink!”
