Words without walls : writers on addiction, violence, and incarceration

275 Pages·2015·1.06 MB·English

by  Shotland

Praise for Words without Walls “Words without Walls will motivate
new readers to read and inspire new writers to write. The stories here
are human and painful; the telling itself is direct, intimate, and sharp.
I can almost imagine the conversations this book was created to
enliven, and the new stories and poems that will be born.”
—JUDITH TANNENBAUM, author of Disguised as a Poem: My Years
Teaching Poetry at San Quentin
“Words without Walls is filled with the descendant voices of García Lorca and
Jean Genet, of Voltaire and Akhmatova. These writers know that incarcerated
voices, marginalized voices, and exiled voices are sacred guides to resisting
everything that makes us less human than we are capable of being.”
—DARRELL BOURQUE, author of Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems
from Acadie
“If, as William Blake says, ‘Prisons are built with bricks of law,’ then this
searing, delving, heartbreaking, and healing collection, composed in diverse
conditions and shared in a thousand lightless places, is potently unlawful.
Featuring an array of America’s most admired writers along with new voices
speaking out bravely, this book sings with a power no walls can quell: the power
of witness. Words without Walls is a unique and necessary tool—both balm and
weapon—for those of us teaching, reading, writing, and listening in the world
beyond the academic pale.”
—PHILIP BRADY, editor at Etruscan Press “In the six years I ran a
prison workshop, I would have welcomed a broad collection of work
like this. These brilliantly selected pieces would have helped the
inmates I worked with more easily see themselves as part of a
community of people whose voicelessness can be the cruelest aspect of
incarceration. Words without Walls offers a range of writers across
genres, holding a lens to human consequence and the incredible
capacity of people to endure—and even rise again.”
—STEPHEN PETT
“Words in spaces of forced confinement and places of recovery, which often
squelch our humanity, become connective fibers, not only to the world removed
but most importantly to the self who fights against intense hurdles to bring those
words, their truth, to the surface. Words without Walls is an amazing collection,
a powerful tool to inspire and empower all people to let their voices be heard.”
—KYES STEVENS, founder and director, Alabama Prison Arts and
Education Project

PUBLISHED BY TRINITY UNIVERSITY PRESS
San Antonio, Texas 78212
Copyright © 2015 by Sheryl St. Germain and Sarah Shotland All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover design by Anne Boston Book design by BookMatters, Berkeley, California Cover art:
©iStock.com/Viorika Prikhodko Photography, ©iStock.com/Purdue9394
Trinity University Press strives to produce its books using methods and materials in an environmentally
sensitive manner. We favor working with manufacturers that practice sustainable management of all natural
resources, produce paper using recycled stock, and manage forests with the best possible practices for
people, biodiversity, and sustainability. The press is a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit
program dedicated to supporting publishers in their efforts to reduce their impacts on endangered forests,
climate change, and forest-dependent communities.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 39.48-1992.
CIP data on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-59534-256-0 ebook 19 18 17 16 15 | 5 4 3 2 1
. . . for the first time, I had something to lose—my chance to read, to write, a
way to live with dignity and meaning.
—Jimmy Santiago Baca
CONTENTS
Editors’ Introduction
Nonfiction
Jimmy Santiago Baca: Coming into Language
R. Dwayne Betts: Thirty Minutes
Greg Bottoms: Fight
James Brown: Instructions on the Use of Alcohol
Toi Derricotte: When My Father Was Beating Me
Nick Flynn: same again
Ken Lamberton: Introduction to Beyond Desert Walls
Ken Lamberton: Desert’s Child
Terra Lynn: Turtle Suit
Ann Marlowe: from How to Stop Time
Scott Russell Sanders: Under the Influence
MerSiha Tuzlic: Everything Is White
Jesmyn Ward: from Men We Reaped
Poetry
John Amen: 23
Jen Ashburn: Bed Sheets
Jen Ashburn: Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony
R. Dwayne Betts: Ghazal
R. Dwayne Betts: Red Onion State Prison
Roger Bonair-Agard: Ode to the Man Who Grabbed My Arm in the Bar
Roger Bonair-Agard: Ode to the Man Who Leaned Out the Truck to Call Me
Nigger
Gwendolyn Brooks: The Mother
Christopher Davis: Jojo’s
Christopher Davis: The Murderer
Toi Derricotte: Clitoris
Natalie Diaz: The Elephants
Natalie Diaz: How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs
Mark Doty: Tiara
Stephon Hayes: Allegheny Ford Trucks
Terrance Hayes: Ars Poetica # 789
Marie Howe: Sixth Grade
Tyehimba Jess: leadbelly in angola prison
Allison Joseph: Home Girl Talks Girlhood
Natalie Kenvin: The Black Eye
Natalie Kenvin: Beating
Etheridge Knight: Another Poem for Me (after Recovering from an O.D.)
Joan Larkin: Genealogy
Joan Larkin: Good-bye
Heather McNaugher: I Could Never
Heather McNaugher: Untitled
W. S. Merwin: Thanks
Naomi Shihab Nye: Kindness
Sharon Olds: I Go Back to May 1937
Sharon Olds: The Language of the Brag
Gregory Orr: If There’s a God . . .
Sara Ries: Dad’s at the Diner
Tim Seibles: For Brothers Everywhere
Tim Seibles: Natasha in a Mellow Mood
Sheryl St. Germain: Addiction
Sheryl St. Germain: Eating
Sheryl St. Germain: Young Night
Christine Stroud: Relapse Suite
Rhett Iseman Trull: The Real Warnings Are Always Too Late
Derek Walcott: Love after Love
Bruce Weigl: The Impossible
Franz Wright: Untitled
Gary Young: Untitled
Fiction
Dorothy Allison: River of Names
Eric Boyd: Anything for Johnny
Bonnie Jo Campbell: The Solutions to Brian’s Problem
Raymond Carver: Popular Mechanics
Maureen Gibbon: from Swimming Sweet Arrow
Jessica Kinnison: Chess Over Royal Street, a love story
Joyce Carol Oates: The Boy
Tim O’Brien: from The Things They Carried
ZZ Packer: from Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Anna Quindlen: from Black and Blue
Sapphire: from Push
Sarah Shotland: from Junkette