Thanks to also Reginald Dwayne Betts.
Dwayne, who was like just such a touchstone
while I wrote these poems.
And I very like cutely and shy was
like, what should I read while I'm writing these poems?
This dude sent me like 20 files, and I read them all,
and was sad for a year.
And one of the things that he sent
me was actually this profile done by GQ of all places that--
it's called "Buried Alive."
And it specifically focuses on the various aspects of,
not just incarceration, but specifically
isolation-- the isolation and what
it means to be in the box, what it means
to be in solitary confinement.
And it actually-- if you get a chance to check it out,
I would do that.
It's difficult but it's like beautiful, necessary read.
And I started thinking a lot about--
I mean, a lot of these are profiles.
So I started thinking a lot about Kalief Browder, who was--
originally-- he's a teenager who was kidnapped--
state-sanctioned kidnapped--
for-- he was accused for stealing a backpack.
He spent 800 days in solitary confinement as a 17-year-old.
And his charges were dropped and he ended up dying by suicide.
He's dude from the Bronx and I wanted
to try to approach his story by negotiating
the form of the ballad, which I learned is like--
the ballad is in the folk tradition.
So it is a song--
there's a poetic ballad and there's also music ballads.
But ballads are sort of supposed to be the song of the unsung,
so of the underdog, the people's person.
And the underdog is sort of whatever you want to say it--
I took it to mean like there's something
that the structure or the system refuses to see that is also
the only thing that people see.
So this is "Ballad of Kalief Browder"
and it begins with two quotes.
"Any imposition of solitary confinement beyond 15 days
constitutes torture," Juan Mendez,
United Nations special reporter August 5, 2011.
And the second one is "it's the prison of prison," Sean Smith
Kalief Browder was stolen, not a backpack.
They took him, put in a cell on an island
off no more than a fleeing whisper.
Went in our lovely boy, came out our lovely shell.
He said, "You're not going to make me say something
I didn't do."
800 days in the box is 8,000 days older.
Held his head toward a sky he could not see.
Only 16 but dusted off a plea deals like dirt
on his shoulder.
12 by eight metal cage, mattress, sink, a toilet,
mice plump as sin.
Weight loss, vision loss, paranoia, hallucination began,
anxiety pulling his spirit taut, spinning it like a harlequin.
Sometimes I can still smell it.
The mildew and algae, the flood and piss.
His sweaty palms.
He paced the floor.
The voices he dismissed.
Two weeks and no shower, needle heat of July.
Oh, oh, the scramble in his head, guards to break him.
So the game is time, begging for ice, and begging for bread.
The backpack just a phantom now, the Lord is a window.
You hope a plane flies over.
Resilience is a form of moral genius.
Innocence, his home now, Innocence, his mother.
Avoiding a brand and marked by another,
he fits the description.
Come stubborn flock.
Come unyielding field.
His "no, I didn't do it," his "no," his shield.
Kalief Browder, gap toothed and golden, he's somebody somebody.
He was somebody stolen.
Venida Browder kissing his swollen face, somebody's baby.
Every court date in stands.
What he went through, she went through.
Her heart striking still, a retribution it demands.
The box it taught Kalief to jump-- the box,
the clock, the cover up.
The box, it flickers.
The box, the sheet he cut.
The worst part every day is you wake up.