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Incarceration
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Acrostic
The prison van passed through the ratty grounds, by the crumbling remains of the 1820s cellblocks and a burnt-out station wagon. The afternoon’s thick heat had turned into a yellow evening haze. Bright razor wire had curled like Christmas tinsel along walls, culverts, corners of buildings, up power poles. The Hudson River glittered at the bottom of the hill. I’d been told the inmates were expecting a new teacher. I’d be “obvious” — my age and sex and suburban neatness all crowded into one word. The prison buildings sat stubborn, old, and impenetrable. I still hadn’t seen an inmate.
October 1998Fiction
The Cooking Lesson
A good fire, in fact, is like a perfect lie. It takes myriad shapes, it mesmerizes, it consumes itself and leaves nothing behind. Somehow, in my mind, the perfect fire and the perfect lie had always been intertwined.
October 1998Fiction
Two Rides
Wind from passing trucks rocked the car hard. He opened the door and got in without speaking, wedged the bag and blankets under his feet. The smell rolled across to me, far worse than I’d imagined: creosote, vomit, rot.
April 1998Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
A Buddhist On Death Row
When the cell doors slammed shut behind me, I found myself inside the first tier of the security housing unit. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew only that I had been relocated to what was considered the “crazy tier” by some, and the worst place in San Quentin by everyone. I was among the worst of the worst.
February 1998Readers Write
Generosity
A spare tire, a Shirley Temple doll, a bruise in the unmistakable shape of a hand
February 1998Readers Write
Roommates
Sacred underclothes, a sheer negligee, a note pinned to a mattress
November 1997Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Eric, Recovering Wino
The jail, the acid, being alone — it all starts to get to me. I feel ashamed, no good. I shit in the toilet; I fish out the turd; I take my spoon and eat a piece of the turd. I drink a spoonful of urine. I break the windowpanes with my elbows, cutting myself in the process. I try to cut off the fingers of my left hand, but succeed only in producing a deep gash across them. The blood floods out in big bright red drops. The air fills with the smell of my blood. I write my name on the wall with it. Thick gobs cling to my gray cell wall. I’m trying to think of a way to cut myself deeper when the guards come and haul me to the hospital.
September 1997Readers Write
Fallen Angels
A stolen backpack, a lesson on self-esteem, a stranger and a thunderstorm
May 1997
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