LETTER FROM SOLITARY

by Katherine West

March 2021

The birds are singing 

and it isn't snowing 

We have our vaccines 

and schools are open 

It is warm enough to sit outside 

but too cool for forest fires 

In sunny spots brown grasses are turning green

from the inside out 

The cat hasn't shed her winter down

still sits on my lap for warmth

She is my most intimate companion 

on this March afternoon in 2021

I have survived the shipwreck 

that tossed me up on this desert island 

on this alien planet 

this solitary confinement 

for a crime 

I didn't commit 

And although Spring is coming 

I'm cold

I could be old and all 

my relationships memories 

I could be dead 

and all my lovers ghosts 

sitting on the side of my bed 

that empty symbol of sleep

and love 

that flag 

that empty symbol of unity 

at half mast 

Half the time 

the ghosts hold my cold 

hands in their cold hands 

whispering platitudes 

like therapists 

over the phone 

like friends 

on a screen 

They cannot hold me 

They cannot hold me down 

as I drift like old smoke 

old scarves 

as I fray

unravel 

silk skeins 

cool 

weightless 

slim 

as threads 

of red sunset 

resting like raptors 

on the updraft 

like strands

of blood 

lovely 

and unloved 

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer.  Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. Using the name Kit West, Katherine's new novel, When Night Comes, A Christmas Carol Revisited has just been released, and a selection of poetry entitled Raising the Sparks will come out in March of 2021, both published by Breaking Rules Publishing. She is presently at work on the sequel to When Night Comes. It is called Slave, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Revisited. She is also an artist.  

CHELSEA MANNING, NOT JUST HERSELF

by Devon Balwit

Chelsea Manning tried to commit suicide last month as she was starting a week of solitary confinement at the prison barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., her punishment for a previous attempt to end her life in July. —The New York Times, November 4, 2016. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters/Newscom via The Intercept.

The constraints are multiple:
Chelsea jailed inside Bradley,
Bradley penned inside the military,
a deployed soldier inside a perimeter

The voices are multiple:
of wrongness, of rage, of never
belonging, of DADT, her security
clearance no security.

The postures are multiple:
curled over a desk, curled fetal,
clenching fists, crying, screaming,
flipping tables, flipping the bird.

The labels are multiple:
MOS, 35F, PFC, Specialist,
gay, trans, gender dysphoric
traitor, victim, hero, woman.

The reactions are multiple:
bullying, scorn, vilification,
compassion, incomprehension,
indifference, pity, respect.

The wishes are multiple:
to move on from being traitor
or whistleblower, to die, to live,
to be heard, to define herself.

Devon Balwit is a poet and educator in Portland, OR.  Her work has appeared before in TheNewVerse.News and elsewhere, in places such as Unlikely Stories Mark V, Five 2 One, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Rattle.

ALABAMA JUSTICE

by Wilda Morris

Anthony Ray Hinton free after nearly 30 years on Alabama Death Row —AL.com

     For Anthony Ray Hinton

“the ball of free will dropped from my hand”

~ Ishmael, in Moby Dick by Herman Melville

black male, poor
innocent, as if that matters
when the DA wants a crime solved quickly

call him a suspect
find his mother’s gun
from which the bullets were not fired
stuff him in a cell

don’t worry if his lawyer
is inadequate
don’t worry if his expert witness
is so inexpert he can hardly see
through the forensic microscope
has little experience in ballistics
is so lamentable the jury
laughs at him

ask for the death penalty
send him off to prison
to live in solitary on death row

without his family
without his friends
without his free will

fight all the way to the Supreme Court
to keep him there

until after his mother is dead
after his youth is gone
after he has almost forgotten
the feel of a loving touch
after decades of not making
significant decisions

when the court bounces
the ball of free will back to his hands
after thirty years


Wilda Morris, a past president of Illinois State Poetry Society, is workshop chair of Poets & Patrons of Chicago. She has won awards for free verse and formal poetry and haiku. She leads poetry workshops for children and for adults and has been widely published. She is retired from a career of teaching graduate student and coordinating a not-for-profit peace and justice organization. Her blog provides monthly contests for poets.

TO DENNIS RODMAN

by Rick Gray





Dennis, I hate to interrupt your cry
but the prisoners are ringing in my ears
and demanding I offer you another trip, or at least a smack.
They don't care if your piercing ruins my anonymous hand,

They are worked to death, and have been waiting for years for this.
There's no courts in the camps, though I hear the nets are everywhere.
Only the guards get to shoot. Dennis, I can't let them down.
Just like you cried, "I'm sorry. I'm just trying to help."

What's it like being so cool and eccentric?
Even when you say "I'm sorry" it sounds so ironic,
like your pink wedding dress. Marriage and divorce must be jokes
when you get to hang court side like Nicholson with the Dope.

Here's their suggestion, Dennis.
Instead of me hitting you, which you won't even feel,
The prisoners want you to play for real next time.
No more games. You go to a prison camp and just sit in solitary

and keep your metal smirk shut.
We'll do it it like the Aztecs.
If you eventually crack and start blubbering tears to the press, you lose,
and the prisoners cut off your famous head and have a ball.


Rick Gray has work currently appearing in Salamander and has an essay forthcoming in the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and teaches in Kabul, Afghanistan.