WEBVTT

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A while ago, I visited the
Bedford Correctional Center,

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and there's some
famous people there.

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Remember Pamela Smart?

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Remember all this-- there
was like a ring of women

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who had younger men.

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And they were plotting
with the younger man

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to kill their husbands?

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(MULTIPLE VOICES) Uh-huh.

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OK, so they're there.

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She's there.

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But, also, some of
you, who are older,

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might remember the
Brink's robbery,

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in Nyack, New York, where two
police officers, and a Brink's

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security guard, were killed.

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And there are some women,
formerly of the Weather

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Underground, who
are in this jail,

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including the woman mentioned
this poem, named Julia.

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This was the first
time I had gone--

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this was a while
ago-- first time

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I had gone to speak in a prison.

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And you come bounding
in saying, hey, I'm

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going to teach you poetry.

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But there's a whole
other reality there

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that you have to look
into before you can really

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have a discussion with them.

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So this is what happened there.

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And we were talking about form.

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And I tried all kinds
of things to do this.

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I didn't want to do rhyme.

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I didn't want to
do a shorter form

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because I know it was
going to be a longer poem.

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And so it wound up
being, just, blank verse,

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just iambic, blank verse.

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And it helped me a lot.

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"I'm sure I know the very moment
when the room became its walls,

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became the clawed,
unyielding door,

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became the backhand slap
of windows, smeared opaque,

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with, merely, all
their million breaths.

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I come with only words,
a ray in gust of light.

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The hex, I hope, would daze
the weary inmates for the hour

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and disappear the
latches on their lives.

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The front of any room is such
a scrubbed and twitchy place,

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especially when I am armed with
just my thrashing passions,

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while an audience of
strangers thinks me strange.

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I'm calmed by other
voices in the air,

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but, asked to share a
thing about themselves,

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not one revealed
her joy or mused

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upon a place that once was home.

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Instead, they spoke in clock.

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'Got 30 more of them in here,'
or, 'had to whoop some ass.

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They added five.'

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One sniffed until I
met her blaring eyes.

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'I just did 13 years.

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That's half the way.'

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The legendary one,
who'd been unarmed,

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had driven getaway in '81.

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Three people, two of them
in blue, had bled to gone.

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But now her shout
commanded space.

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'Ha, how many years for me?

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The rest of them.'

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And all the women
laughed, so I laughed too.

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At first, not
realizing, Julia meant

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that she was in the
place she'd always be.

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And all the awkward cackling
meant she wouldn't be alone.

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The sisterhood had vowed
that every one of them

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would learn to tend a
spewing wound and mimic glee.

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Two.

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When quiet dropped as if a whip
had cracked, they held my eyes.

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And their implicit dare was
red and human in the room.

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The gaunt and haunted
butch, who never

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stopped the drag of fingers
through her harshly-scissored

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net, wanted to know if all my
pretty lines could resurrect

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the movement of a mouth
that knew her body long

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before its fall.

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And then a blue-black diva,
petulant and comically aloof--

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who looked as if some hard
miscommunication had resulted

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in her being plopped among
these filthy-mouthed, unkept,

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much lesser-classer folk--

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insisted I unearth a
rhyme to finally twist

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the record back to right.

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And Julia, who had
driven murderers

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away from what they
kill, now owned the room

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and saw no reason to
renounce her reign.

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'Go on and read your
poems now,' she barked,

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'because you know
enough about us.

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Right?'

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Another inmate raised her hand
and seemed to want to speak,

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but then she dropped
that hand, instead,

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to veil a ruined mouth.

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Her back was bended
almost twice.

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I think she knew that it would
only straighten when she died,

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and that she'd die--
right there in Bedford,

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with her mourners-- squalling,
from a single throat.

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Her whole, collapsing
body was the time,

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and any poem I could
write for her would just

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have kept on ending.

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'Listen, now,' I said.

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'I'll read you what I have.'

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But all the lines were this--

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'I cannot shatter clocks.'

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Three.

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The line was this--

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"I cannot shatter clocks.'

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And in the middle of
that line, somewhere

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inside the reel of that, a
woman screamed and screamed.

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She wasn't in the room with us.

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I thought that she was down
a hallway, far enough away.

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Her screaming shouldn't have
rocked our walls the way

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it did, but no one
seemed to notice.

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No one raised their
head or looked

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in the direction of the door.

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There were no startled glances--

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quizzical, alarmed--
all during the time

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the woman failed to
pull in any breaths,

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or bellow just one word
that I could understand.

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I scanned the room and
thought of running down

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the hall myself to
see if I could help,

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but all I had were poems.

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And I didn't want to see her
anguished face or all the blood

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I knew she must be drowning in.

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'What's happening?' I
asked. 'What's going on?

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Should we get out?'

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The woman, who was
halfway done at 13 years,

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had pity, finally, and simply
said, 'we can't go home.

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Until we've done our time--
for some of us, until we die--

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we can't go home.

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No matter what has happened
here, or happened there,

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we have to hear it
here, and tough it out.'

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And then I knew that they
had understood the words

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that the screaming
woman buried deep.

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'You've got to let me go.

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My mom is dead.

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I need to go back home.

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My mom is dead.

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Have mercy on my soul.

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My mom is dead.

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Unlock the goddamn cage.

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My mom is dead.

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Motherfucker, listen.

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My mom is dead.'

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Each time she heard the
air, we heard the clock.

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[FINGERS SNAPPING]