| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
DOING TIME
Arlene Ang
(Blueline)
We have four hours.
He has been up since six.
He is reading a novel by Steinbeck.
He never keeps track of the titles.
He says they remind him
of unpaid bills, the jobs
that changed from state to state.
I am allowed two keys,
my driver's license, cigarettes,
loose paper money in a transparent bag,
ten snapshots of the duck pond
at different angles because
he wants something
innocuous from his past.
He mentions he is
eating well. He is trying to recall
his dreams for an inmate who once
practiced medicine illegally
in another country. I hum
a tune about dancing alone.
I promise to be back.
Here is the future
on the wall: Only one hug
when you first meet and one more
when it is time to leave.
His sentences always end with
I'm sorry. I hold his hand
where everyone can see it.
Judge Frank Wilson’s comments: “This deceptively simple and artless lyric repays close attention. ‘His sentences,’ for instance. Those he speaks and those he has received — and is likely to receive again, for this sounds like someone rather at home in the slammer. The way that line breaks — ‘His sentences always end with / I’m sorry…’ His sentences end with ‘I’m sorry’ and the speaker is sorry, too. Then there’s ‘the jobs / that changed from state to state.’ Were these jobs he worked at or jobs he pulled off, one wonders. ‘I hold his hand / where everyone can see it.’ ‘I promise to come back.’ I’m not so sure she will. Maybe that’s why she’s sorry. This gritty little poem is the real deal — showing, not telling, how the inmate’s not the only one who does time.”
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