self-portrait as state property

poetry reading - audio & text

Eleven A oh six seven one / they call as the boy not quite a man / moves further down the line like a lamb in a slaughterhouse. End of the conveyor belt, / a nurse tells him to drop his drawers so she can inspect his meat. / She prods & pokes. He coughs & chokes. / But there’s nothing funny about spreading your cheeks for a stranger / to gaze inside your asshole. Nothing funny about the officer’s nightstick / cracking against somebody’s skull, / shattering their ribs because the nurse gave them a woody. / The trusties shave the boy’s beautiful dark mane. The raw shampoo burns his scalp / under water like the Devil’s piss. / Returning to the line to get his picture taken, / his mug forever remembered in the Hall of Shame. / An officer with eyes the color of tobacco spit hands him an ID: / Name, DIN, Eyes, DOB, Height, Weight, Hair, Sex, Language / But none of these things matter. / He is eleven A oh six seven one forever, / or at least for the next decade & a half (which to him is the same). / His state greens are two sizes too big. The others say he’ll grow into them. / He looks around at the gunmetal bars, the white paint, the officers’ state blue uniforms / & doesn’t see how he can grow into them … / into this. / How the hell do you get used to seeing men used as pincushions & cutting boards, / their mouths like gaping flounders when the officers break it up. / How the hell do you get used to breathing air thick as mildew, the floors of the corridors speckled with the blood of decades past, the sleepless nights, / the open windows in February that close in July, / the roaches inside your locker, / in the hole, / underneath your sink, dripping with water— / water that reminds the boy of Lady Liberty, of pennies, of the nine volts he pressed on his tongue as a child at his grandparent’s house, out of boredom, / out of a deep frustration no one (including himself) was aware of. / He can never get used to the others, the other men, the other kids born without last names, / unable to breathe because they’re buried alive. Drowning in the fire, in the box, kicking the walls & rattling the bars, flinging shit like chimps. / Screaming for someone, anyone, to listen. / Watching as the boy not quite a man / eleven A oh six seven one / moves further down the line