And then I'm going to read a couple of poems that
have been written in direct relationship
to having a sister in prison, and then just some of the work
I've done in other places.
Something I shared recently in Portland--
and we talked about it a bit in dinner tonight--
and I won't say where this happened here,
but for those of you who visited somebody
who's been incarcerated, the place is filthy, right?
Like intentionally filthy.
And the idea that there is a particular bathroom that I'd
been in a couple of times, and every time
I went into this bathroom, it was a disaster area.
Like papers crumpled, thrown on the floor, wet paper towels.
And part of that is it's meant to make those
of us who are going there--
for the people we love or the people we care about
or the people who we demand to be treated
like full human beings--
for us to feel less also.
Like we don't even deserve that, like we're
entering a place where people are not fully human.
And so one day, as I was coming in,
I thought, what will happen?
And so I picked up the papers, and I put them
in the garbage can.
And I folded a brown--
because you just have that shitty brown,
whatever that brown paper.
I don't know if it's in those bathrooms.
So if it's not, sorry about that.
[LAUGHTER]
But just that kind of brown paper bag material.
And so I just folded it up and put it in the garbage can
with the rest of those papers.
And I just barely wipe the sink.
We were in there for about four or five hours.
When I came back out, I went to use that bathroom again.
And it was the bathroom not for those who are inside,
but for those of us on the outside.
And those paper towels were all over the floor
again, including the one that I had folded.
So they had intentionally thrown the trash can upside down again
and emptied that trash, again.
Like that's it.
Everything in those spaces are intentional,
and they're meant to diminish you as a human being.
Not just those who are inside, but even those of us
who are trying to connect.
So this entire idea of punishment for me
is one that I don't understand.
"Punishment."
I do not trust punishment.
Not my own, unless my infliction of it on another.
Its long hallway.
Its unwindowed room.
I didn't stop at the red light because I wanted to die.
I didn't stop at the red light because I
thought I could make it.
The referee calls five fouls, but doesn't see 20 other fouls
through the course of any game.
To avenge?
I do not believe it is possible.
What is done is done.
Who's to say, who should suffer and who already has?
I do not trust punishment of any body.
What it is meant to accomplish who it is
meant to accomplish that upon.
And who designed the whip to unravel so completely?
What innovation, that it fits both the master's hand
and mine.
In America, one should not hang themself.
But in America, one can be hanged.
You can actually be hanged in two states right now.
My sister is punished by being placed in a prison.
Her four kids are at home, punished also,
but in a more magical way--
their mother has disappeared.
A Houdini in handcuffs.
My sister is punished with boredom.
I send books, crosswords, coloring books, word searches.
We become children again.
My sister is punished by having a male guard stand
in the entrance to her shower, where
she hands him her dirty pair of disposable polypropylene
panties in exchange for him handing
her a new pair of disposable polypropylene panties.
His fingers touch and briefly hold her hand
when she takes the new pair.
In prison, there is no touch but the touch of punishment.
My sister is punished by the male guards
who watch her shower.
So she refuses to shower while they are watching,
for which she is then punished, again,
for refusing her punishment.
To punish is to convince a body, they are not a body.
A body once punished will never be a body again in America.
Only a body with punishment papers, a record,
like a new American origin story.
A sick body in any country needs medicine,
and my sister is sick.
But now that she has an American punishment,
she has a new body, a less body.
She is punished and has lost her right to what her body needs.
She is denied her thyroid medicine
for the first three weeks of her punishment
until she becomes sick enough.
Enough is a shifting number, like any law.
Like the scales of American goodness.
Guess how many fingers a white man is holding behind his back.
And then guess the cost of each of his rings
and his watch and his cufflinks.
Guess how many museum boards he sits on,
and how much art his private prison money has tainted.
Yet here I am, making art of my sister's punishment.
My sister is punished so they make her sleep on the floor.
She doesn't deserve a mattress, and they are busy--
too busy to find her one.
Punishment is a many levered machine
and it takes much labor, many hands,
a lot of concentration and intentionality
to pull all those levers.
Which lever have your hands rested on?
Which lever have you pulled against my sister?
At home, which is now a house in punishment,
my sister's kids are crying.
They don't know how long a year is, two years, a month.
The three-year-old keeps saying, nine more days
until mama comes home.
He's been saying that for 180 days.
The four-year-old repeats, she'll be back by the time
it's time to go to the river again, meaning summer.
But it's always summer here.
In our desert, it is always desert.
The eight-year-old corrects them all and says,
she'll be back by Christmas, she has to be.
But the oldest boy is too smart and tells everybody,
it's nine days times infinity and, alas, Christmas, one
that has already happened.
Time is just enough time for my sister and her kids
to wonder what they even deserve of this life--
a mother, mercy, medicine, a mattress.
That's what it means to do time.
It means, what do you deserve this time?
And each time, it's less and less.
Time wants to break us down to our seconds.
Yes, time is punishment.
America arrived at us knowing this, which
is why it killed so many of us.
Still kills so many of us.
Because death is long.
[APPLAUSE]
You don't have to clap.