And so this poem is for Rojai Fentress,
who's incarcerated in the Augusta Correctional Center,
which is an interesting tale.
If you go on the Innocence Project website,
you can read his story.
It's really a--
I mean, it's like an insane tale of how they can just--
the system can just like really do unjustice to someone
and keep them detained for over 20 years over something
that they just didn't do.
So I was inspired after reading his story to write this piece.
It's called "289-128 Animals."
And it begins with an epigraph by Rojai.
He says, "The only thing less than a nigga is a prisoner,
the convicted, the guilty."
"A heat wave envelops the mid-Atlantic abnormal
like the notion of prison.
Outside and unrelenting centigrade
makes the housing unit oven bake.
Sales are jam packed with the guilty who play
it out, though very innocent.
Seven sounded better than 25 straight.
For more than a few consecutive days,
there is a spell cast over the complex.
A 5-inch fan oscillates the aroma of urine
from the toilet bowl, and it's jungle like.
Here grown men and young boys blend,
each inmate's sadness compounded.
No shade, nowhere to hide.
And running would get that ass shot at the razor fence.
Dangling in blood so you sit, suffer,
while asking, is this how the story ends?"