No Enemies by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Author:Jimmy Santiago Baca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

EDUCATION

Overcast day, late Autumn

six of us park in the lot

tower guards and cameras monitor us

as we enter the women’s prison in

McCloud, Oklahoma.

We make this trip

every month for six months

stand at the edge of the parking lot

trying to understand what prison really is

appreciate I can walk, breathe

without a guard yelling when to and how long.

Back home after a week working

with the women in writing exercises

my daughter and I juice carrots,

beets, ginger, garlic, celery, apples.

I dump rinds and fruit cores and pulp

in the compost heap

turn what’s at the bottom to the sun

to take the seed in their brown hand come spring

sprout from the fertile corpse a freedom

reaching to be who they were meant to.

Going to the McCloud Women’s Prison

teach reading and writing is my way of creating

acts of breaking free

in every woman who learns

to express herself.

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