Doing Time (11 page)

Meanwhile, daily institutional routines — like the count, work shifts, meals, yard time — supplant habits and expectations people bring from the world outside. For better or for worse, they order the prisoner's day. But some routines, like the delivery of mail, permit a recipient like Jimmy Santiago Baca a fleeting transcendence of all constraint.

Nature, too, has routines that can't be entirely locked away. New seasons, breaking the routines of old seasons, also color prison routine and may convert a prison guard into a dreaming fisherman, as in Michael Hogan's “Spring.”

Prisoners' performances, displays of personality by which they assure themselves of their own humanity and put their personal stamp on their surroundings, can also be called routines. Thus a new inmate, like Lori McLuckie's “Trina Marie,” flaunts her style in an effort to navigate the enigmatic new society and discover whom she can trust, while clinging to fantasies of happiness. In “After Lights Out,” Barbara Saunders sets such brave performances against the real — and routine — threat of predators. Doing time is made of uneasy combinations of such competing routines.

Music can evoke familiar worlds of freedom and their cherished routines. The beat of a conga drummer in D Yard stirs the answering rhythms of poet Raymond Ringo Fernandez.
“Contratiempo con el ttempo”
— one beat, one time, one way of doing time calls up another, and the dissonance of a lone instrument in “culturally deprived” Attica plays against the many-voiced harmonies of a Nuyorican jam-session and home. “Lies and gossip”* (as Fernandez characterizes prison discourse in another poem) are routines that help domesticate steel-and-concrete corridors, “In the Big Yard,” by Reginald S. Lewis, catalogues the competing routines of yard gossip circa 1988. His poem ends with a tribute to Pops, the runner who has seen it all and acts as guide. But by 1997, the survival of a similar old con is menaced by the heedless young in Patrick Nolan's poem “Old Man Motown.”

Inherent in all routine is the possibility of its rupture. Prison routines are shadowed by the mental mutinies that would destroy them. Hostility between prisoner and guard becomes reflexive, along with the repression of rage — and other feeling — in both. In Scott Antworth's “The Tower Pig,” institutional routine is ruptured by a brief venture of keeper and kept into free air; the encounter between these two very different prison-hardened characters permits a slight but crucial opening, a moment of surprising recognition. In Daniel Roseboom's “The Night the Owl Interrupted,” an alternative Utopian solidarity briefly emerges with the near-miraculous intervention of nature. It provides the men inner fortification against the return to institutional routine.

Ice has been cracking all day
and small boys on the shore
pretending it is the booming of artillery
lie prone clutching imaginary carbines.

Inside the compound returning birds
peck at bread scraps from the mess hall.

Old cons shiver in cloth jackets
as they cross the naked quadrangle.
They know the inside perimeter is exactly
two thousand eighty-four steps
and they can walk it five more times
before a steam whistle blows for count.

Above them a tower guard dips his rifle
then raises it again dreamily.
He imagines a speckled trout
coming up shining and raging with life.

1975, Arizona State Prison-Florence Florence, Arizona

I sit bundled in the peaceful sun.

To my right, a slip of colored sail goes downriver behind the old death house.

Two prisoners circle a dirt path bordering a green field double-fenced and walled with liberal layers of barbed wire.

Buck, a Lifer, works on the bars doing chins and dips building his house trim and strong against the long years.

George, hands scrunched in wordless pockets walks with recent loss of his young brother. We nod hello, and faded pennants snap in the wind along the fencetop.

1985, Sing Sing Correctional Facility Ossining, New York

From the cold hands of guards
Flocks of white doves
Handed to us through the bars,
Our hands like nests hold them
As we unfold the wings
They crash upward through
Layers of ice around our hearts,
Cracking crisply
As we leave our shells
And fly over the waves of fresh words,
Gliding softly on top of the world
Flapping our wings for the lost horizon.

1976, Arizona State Prison-Florence Florence, Arizona

Walking down the prison hallway
With your scarlet-lipstick Norma Jean smile,
Green eyes inviting;
Deliberately so.
A woman-child
With translucent white skin
And the impetuous manner
Of a street child
Who knows the drill;
How to smoke cigarettes
And see people for what they really want from you.

These gray walls,
These dirty floors,
This cynicism and despair
Set off
Your vivacious and vulnerable glow;
And the deep gruff sounds
Echoing between these stark walls
Are mere background to the clear
Sweet tones of your childlike voice;
To your bold laughter
That defies anything less.

You forge your way
Through this confusion every day,
Burning your candle at both ends
And loving at whim;
Not quite sure
Who to count on,
What is solid
Or what you want to be solid.
And in your concrete room at night,
Among your cigarettes and lipstick tubes,
Your letters and pictures,
You sit on your steel bunk
And wonder when you'll be able to settle down
To that one great love
You have always imagined.

1991, Colorado Correctional Institution for Women Canon City, Colorado

Lonely, ail angles and bones
knobs and knees and
eyes like saucers.
Fat Nugie, a billiard ball
in a baseball cap and
tennis shoes.
Rhonda, the 400 pound flasher
letting it all hang out
“not shamed o' my body.”
Pie, strippin' and dancin' and
swinging a towel
and mooning the C.O.
as he walks away.
Night wraiths.
Dancers in the dark.
Forms move together, coalesce
separate and re-form.
Some singing, some laughter.
The scurry, the sneaking.

Predators come silently in the night
and whisper
“come with me.”
Those who watch
immobilized, struck
dumb
pretend not to know
pretend not to see.

1997, Eddie Warrior Correctional Center Taft, Oklahoma

on warm summer evenings
i hear the tumbao
of your sky blue conga
declamando
carrying your inspiration
over the wall
like a refreshing
Caribbean wind

if it weren't for
the culturally deprived minds
in the gun towers
i'd swear
i was in Central Park
chilling out
by the fountain
con un yerbo and a cold
can of Bud
or

tumbao:
a Caribbean rhythm played on the conga;
dedamando:
reciting;
un yerbo:
Nuyorican for a joint (marijuana; Sp.
hierba,
pron. “yerba”);
badendo coro
at
un bembe:
singing in chorus at a jam-session;
repica vida:
make life ring (in hand percussion, hits in rapid succession are called repique);
contratiempo con el tiempo:
lit. counter-rhythm with the rhythm. (RRF)

hacienda coru
at un bembe
on 110th street
where even the children
understand clave:

     cla-cla/ cla-cla-cla

repica vida conguero
contratiempo con el tiempo
que with each slap
on the conga's skin
you bring me closer
to home.

1982, Attica Correctional Facility Attica, New York

Rumors abound Inmate So-and-So done gotta parole date-Last Monday, but sucker don't even Know his woman done run off with “sweet Cadillac Willie” Who spent her

welfare check on gasoline an* blow on a new pair of skins. An' that scary lil' wimp locks on B Block ain't cool, man. Snitched on his rap-partner ‘bout that rape-kidnap-homicide-robbery back in ‘76. Hit goin' down in the Big Yard.

Stay away, Homey. ‘Cause bookies layin' ten-to-one odds some lieutenant finds the rat with his head propped up on the end of a long shank. When they find the body what they do is ship it home in a cheap plywood box, tag with his number on it swinging list lessly on his big toe an' a “Whut have I done to deserve this?” look on his dumb ugly face.

Other day seen new blood shambling through the reception gate talking loud an' ail cocky like he Mr, T. So a big mean lookin' con doin' life for mutilating his pregnant wife walks boldly up to Young-blood an'

whispers somethin' soft an' sweet to ‘im an' next day Young-blood's lips are red an' glossy an'

his hair is long an' straight an' he's switchin' ‘round the Big Yard

Like he Diana Ross

An' the big con man says, “Hot young punk for sale, y'all!” Squinting into the sun, Old Man “Pops” say be been down so long he done lost count.

“Kinda git used to it afta while, son,” Pops says: the big time hoods an' their paper Cadillacs on cruise control. The Hos on the stroll down the endless lightless white-ciay strip.

Crack junkies chillin' out on smoke-marshmallow clouds. I'seiidoinidlecruals over there rappin' about (he struggle. An' ihe hapless chorus of crooners tryin' to sound like the Temptations.

Pops says lie don't pay ‘nn no mind an' he ain't hstenin' Don'i even care ‘bout not bin' cause he ain't neva bad a woman noway.

Old bones tuns the Big Yard through Chugging along like a locomotive thai neva slops. Runs all day long — Hookies layin' ren-to one odds old I'ops pianinu' to fly right over the big wall.

1988, State Correctional Institution Pennsylvania

Old Man Motown
dances toe to toe
around the prison
exercise track
throwing jabs
as he bobs and weaves,
dressed in cutoff
denim shorts
and hard soled boots,
while young cons lie
like rock lizards
bemoaning the three
digit heat.

Old Man Motown alone
with his thoughts,
shoots short combinations,
counters blow for blow
with some imaginary foe,
his five-foot-five frame
heavy with age,
pushing forward against
the concrete upgrade
that emanates a wall
of rippling heat.

Old Man Motown
his raven wing skin
streaked white with dried
sweat, knees pulsing pistons
of determination — to see
this silver haired grandpa
with the blue cataract eye,
one can't help but smile
as he dances his dance
in the sweltering northern
California sun.

Old Man Motown
times have changed
The once noble beasts
of this barren Savannah
are almost extinct,
ravaged by the vicious sweep
of rat packs that make prey
of the aged, sick, and weak.

1997, California State Prison-Sacramento Represa, California

“Caine!” One of the East Wing hogs called after me through the crash and clamor of lunch release. I couldn't even see the guy, lost as he was in the flood of inmates surging past him for the chow hall, but from the tone of his voice he had to be a block officer. Rookie guards actually take classes: Speaking with Authority 101.

“Caine!” he barked again because I was acting like I'd not heard him, trying to be just another face in the stampede. “Stop by the SOC office. Captain Kruller wants to see you!”

Subtle, I thought. Tell me that when I've got two hundred cons packed around me to wonder what business I've got at the Security Operations Center on a Saturday afternoon. No one goes to the SOC office for good news. Standard convict paranoia — who's ratting who out — is enough to get at least some of them thinking.

“Spell my name right when you give your statement.” My neighbor, Hodgson, chortled from deep inside his walrus neck as he lumbered down the stairs.

“Sure.” I sneered at his back. “You spell it how, d-i-c-k-h-e-a-,” I began, but he was already gone.

Captain Kruller was six feet of spit-shine and razor-creased blues with a leathery hide looking like it'd been cut from a rhino's ass and Superglued over an Erector Set, He kept his Marine citations and ribbons velvet-backed and under glass on his office wall to let everyone know he'd perfected his bearing on Parris Island and not behind the walls of Thomaston.

“Come in, Caine,” he said. He'd pulled my file before I showed up and glanced at my mug shot. “Take a seat,” he said, to give us the illusion of familiarity. I'd been sitting on folding chairs and wooden stools for the better part of a decade. My ass didn't know what to make of naugahyde and cushions.

“I've got some bad news, John,” he said. Suddenly we were on a first-name basis.

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Your grandmother passed away yesterday morning,” he said, his hands flat and precisely spaced on the blotter in front of him. “I'm sorry,” he added as if such sentiments were foreign to him.

“Thank you,” I muttered, only half believing I'd said it. Please and thank-yous pass between cops and inmates like bricks through a keyhole.

“You're taking it well.”

I said that I'd known it was coming. She'd been sick for a long time. Truth is, I wasn't about to show him anything. Pain, joy, worry — whatever can be denied them — are shielded away from them until the cell doors slam and we're secured in our solitude. I'd weathered my first chunk of grieving for Nana when she was still mostly alive. For ten days in the hole, I had nothing to do but hate Strazinski, the Tower Pig, for putting me there and to mourn a grandmother finally too sick to visit.