Angola (Louisiana)
by Michael S. Harper

Three-fourths Mississippi
River, one-fourth rattlesnakes,
and for company, razorwire
fences, experiments from South
Africa, aging behind bars,
all in their seventies,
with no parole; perhaps
2500 natural life sentences,
30-year lifers behind bars.

Still, the roads have flowers;
and in the prison hospital
the Lifers Association creed
is in full bloom, technical
supernovas of the TV world:
you avoid mirrors as you can’t
avoid hard labor, false teeth,
high blood pressure, rape:
all this in the prison magazine.

Wheelchair has transcended mirrors;
he dreams about theft and harassment
as a prison underwater,
decompression channels of the bends,
cheap guards in scuba tanks,
for he is never coming up;
it is “too exotic,” he says,
and you hunger for the fields
you were broken in;
you hunger for your white neighbors,
dragon deputies, the KKK,
as you count the gray hairs
on the sideview of your mustache.

After three heart attacks
you can stand gospel music,
sports, violence, drugs,
for deathrow education
is bimonthly books,
the old folks’ home on this shuttle.

I was born on False River:
tell my story in amplitude
from one slavery to another;
give me the pure medicine
for rape, murder, the nectar
in balm for the barroom fight:
teach me to read, and write.

For Ernest J. Gaines