Lolita Lebron is a Puerto Rican former political prisoner who was sentenced to 50 years for her part in an armed demonstration in the U.S. House of Representatives on March 1, 1954. She was imprisoned for 25 years in the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia. She was pardoned under the Carter administration and released in September 1979. She returned to Puerto Rico. During her imprisonment, both of her children died.

Alone
by Lolita Lebron

I’m quiet, like the still water
in the solitude of my cell.
I move serenely towards the sea
with my stillness and my leaping…
Alone. Only the voice of the rain
can console my suffering.
“The rain is Your voice.” I feel
all your kisses and embraces.
the treasures yielded by
the shadows and beams of light
on these walls.

They are my wounded and bound birds,
with hollow flesh, stone-like-calluses
between their terrible fists
and painted mouths gagged
in deafening confinement.

I hear them in the field on Labor Day.
What a tumult!
The tired sun reaches its zenith
as the cloud clears and the worn-out dream
erupts in the back and forth of their laughter…

They drag themselves through
the furrowed dust of talk
and hooch.
They are the very blood and veins
that run through the river of the world.

They are the wound
that the powerful of the earth inflict.
Yet we never see the decayed reflection
of their guns on these walls.

They are the victims of drugs
who have made millionaires of the “pure ones,”
haunting skeletons of doom
that shine like the gold and copper
stolen from us by the Yanqui colonizers.