how to write to your inmate
do not use staples or paper clips within your letter to your inmate do not use marker,
crayon, glitter, glue, stickers or lipstick on the letter or envelope addressed to your
inmate do not give your inmate any drawings or markings that can be misconstrued as
secret code i.e. art or pictures or their daughter’s drawings such breaches in security will
result in destroying of the letter do not ask your inmate to hold you without
permission from the prison do not speak of the way freshness is always heavier in the
mornings as your inmate has not seen the dew in so long do not forget your inmate
do not write anything in the letters that you wouldn’t want a third party to read do not
learn anything in childhood that your inmate was meant to teach you because it will not
be the same without them do not send flowers because your inmate may have
forgotten what they look like do not forget your inmate do not talk of the outside
world in your letter to your inmate do not talk of your new life without them in your
letter to your inmate do not think that someone will love you that anyone will love
you without becoming trapped in something or another, their arms outstretched and
waiting do not forget your father do not forget your inmate
i want to say i found my father’s letters
underneath
my own mouth
in the midwest house, all curled up
and chewed from years of reading and going over. i want to say
they meant something other
than words. this is not the story everyone wanted, the truth
churning itself all over the kitchen table, all over the sweet sky.
my father appears and we are in a room where we can exist
at the same time without
so much thinking about it. i’m having the dream
where he has nothing to say except for that the sunlight looks so
bright from the window above us, like he hasn’t felt the heat
in years. i want to tell you the story without feeling like
i need to prove that he says anything.
he tells me about my own name
like he owns it in his mouth, like he made it with his hands
out of the glass separating us, the barelythere of it all.
i do think he says tell your mother i love her
and i can never remember what i say
after that
poem in which my father is trapped in a jail cell
in which his father is trapped in a jail cell, in which his father is trapped in a
noose, in which his father is trapped in a cage, in which his father is trapped on a boat,
in which his father is trapped in the sea, and in the poem every mother comes to the
water at the same time, their bodies wet with grief, the atlantic sun and her children,
christened with the mention of poplar bark, i have never known you, but i have always
loved you, every scream in the thick of the water, i’ve been born your brand of sorrow,
and for you every mother is here, calling out names of their loved ones, hoping that the
boy will come home, and yes, there she is, she’s begging for her son back, every mother
is here
poem made of my father’s letters to my mother, 2004-2014
remember when we were not old, still brandished with our own touches? we went to
lake michigan off of miller beach and it was back when the sand was still so visible and
unrelenting, licking the inside of its own stomach you remember? and you wore
those white capris you know the ones; your hair was so long i thought i could never
find my way out of it, the coils wrapping themselves around themselves and it was so
early and i thought that maybe if i never took my eyes off of you the whole day it would
never get darker, the morning fading into its own pseudolight and long dance and
you would never have to leave. i think it was 1994, and i swear lisa i swear i’ve
never seen anything more beautiful than you on that day when we met and i just
knew we would have so many more days like that, so yellow and quiet and holy and i
know i’ll get out of here sweetheart and someday we can go back and relive our
mistakes like i never did a bad thing like i never was anything but lover and lover and
father and and someday we’ll touch not through the plexiglass, its shape bowing
under our heated palms and every day every day we’ll turn 30
