Doing Time Read online

  DOING TIME

  25 YEARS OFP RISON

  W RITING

  A PEN American Center

  Prize Anthology

  Edited by

  Bell Gale Chevigny

  Foreword by

  Sister Helen Pre jean

  To the memory of

  Charles Caldwell (1941-1973)

  and

  to all the other men and women

  who find their voice in prison

  Copyright © 1999, 2011 by PEN American Center

  Foreword © 1999, 2011 by Sister Helen Prejean

  Introduction and afterword copyright © 2011 by Bell Gale Chevigny

  Section introductions copyright © 1999, 2011 by Bell Gale Chevigny

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61145-144-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Sister Helen Prejean

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction by Bell Gale Chevigny

  INITIATIONS

  Prison Letter, M. A. Jones

  Siempre, William Aberg

  Dog Star Desperado, William Orlando

  How I Became a Convict, Victor Hassine

  Arrival, Judee Norton

  TIME AND ITS TERMS

  Reductions, William Aberg

  Where or When, Jackie Ruzas

  An Overture, M. A. Jones

  Vivaldi on the Far Side of the Bars, M. A. Jones

  Killing Time, Roger Jaco

  After Almost Twenty Years, Chuck Culhane

  There Isn’t Enough Bread, Chuck Culhane

  The Manipulation Game: Doing Life in Pennsylvania, Diane Hamill Metzger

  Giving Me a Second Chance, Larry Bratt

  Myths of Darkness: The Toledo Madman and the Ultimate Freedom, J. R. Grindlay

  ROUTINES AND RUPTURES

  Spring, Michael Hogan

  Autumn Yard, Chuck Culhane

  Letters Come to Prison, Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Trina Marie, Lori Lynn McLuckie

  After Lights Out, Barbara Saunders

  poem for the conguero in D yard, Raymond Ringo Fernandez

  In the Big Yard, Reginald S. Lewis

  Old Man Motown, Patrick Nolan

  The Tower Pig, Scott A. Antworth

  The Night the Owl Interrupted, Daniel Roseboom

  WORK

  Chronicling Sing Sing Prison, Easy Waters

  Cut Partner, Michael E. Saucier

  Gun Guard, Michael E. Saucier

  Skyline Turkey, Richard Stratton

  Suicide! Robert Kelsey

  READING AND WRITING

  Coming into Language, Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Pell Grants for Prisoners, Jon Marc Taylor

  Tetrina, Bedford Hills Writing Workshop

  Sestina: Reflections on Writing, Bedford Hills Writing Workshop

  Behind the Mirror’s Face, Paul St. John

  Black Flag to the Rescue, Michael E. Saucier

  PLAYERS, GAMES

  I See Your Work, Joseph E. Sissler

  solidarity with cataracts, Vera Montgomery

  Clandestine Kisses, Marilyn Buck

  Ryan’s Ruse, Jackie Ruzas

  Feathers on the Solar Wind, David Wood

  Death of a Duke, Dax Xenos

  RACE, CHANCE, CHANGE

  First Day on the Job, Henry Johnson

  Eleven Days Under Siege, Paul Mulryan

  Pearl Got Stabbed! Charles P. Norman

  Sam, Michael Wayne Hunter

  Lee’s Time, Susan Rosenberg

  FAMILY

  Ancestor, Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Uncle Adam, Diane Hamill Metzger

  The Red Dress, Barbara Saundcrs

  Ignorance Is No Excuse for the Law, Alcjo Dao’ud Rodriguez

  Our Skirt, Kathy Boudin

  The Ball Park, Henry Johnson

  Norton #59900, Judee Norton

  A Stranger, Anthony La Barca Falcone

  After My Arrest, Judith Clark

  To Vladimir Mayakovsky, Judith Clark

  A Trilogy of Journeys, Kathy Boudin

  THE WORLD

  Prisons of Our World, Allison Blake

  Pilots in the War on Drugs, Robert J. Moriarty

  No Brownstones, Just Alleyways & Corner Pockets Full, J. L. Wise Jr.

  Americans, Jon Schillaci

  For Sam Manzie, Jon Schillaci

  Diner at Midnight, David Taber

  The Film, David Taber

  The 5-Spot Cafe, Henry Johnson

  Melody, J. C. Amberchele

  Mel, J. C, Amberchele

  GETTING OUT

  Dream of Escape, Henry Johnson

  After All Those Years, Ajamu C. B. Haki

  Stepping Away from My Father, William Aberg

  To Those Still Waiting, M. A. Jones

  The Break, Robert M. Rutan

  DEATH ROW

  For Mumia: I Wonder, Kathy Boudin

  Easy to Kill, Jackie Ruzas

  Recipe for Prison Pruno, Jarvis Masters

  Conversations with the Dead, Stephen Wayne Anderson

  Walker’s Requiem, Anthony Ross

  “Write a poem that makes no sense,” Judith Clark

  Notes

  Text Credits

  About the Authors

  Afterword: More About the Authors

  Foreword

  When I read anything I’m always hoping the writer will take me into realms of experience I wouldn’t otherwise have, experiences that push the edges of human life and our ways of doing things, put me up against myself and make me ask: What would I do in this situation, who would I become? Adventure stories are like that. Prison writings are like that. “Come with me,” these convict writers say, “I’ll take you into my world. Hang on. It’s quite a ride.”

  Quite a ride indeed. I am not unacquainted with prison life. I’ve visited prisoners for fourteen years, accompanied four men to execution, know a lot about death row, wrote a book, Dead Man Walking. But I know I’m an outsider. I’ve never heard the clang of bars behind me as I said good-bye to freedom. Never had all the eyes in the room turn to me, “fresh meat,” coming in. At the end of each visit I get to walk out. And every time I find myself taking deep gulps of freedom.

  Here are fifty-one writers who take us into a world we hope we never do more than visit. A world where you never touch a doorknob, where you have no control over your environment. A world without privacy, a world of frequent strip-searches, a world where the “shakedown crew” swoops down upon you and throws all your stuff out of your “box” into a heap, laughing, pointing at your photos, walking across your baby’s smile. A world where many of the people have serious personality disorders, and you can’t get away from them. A razor-wired world where you never sit under a tree because the yard is stripped bare for securiry reasons, where security governs everything.

  We i
ncarcerate a whole lot of people in this country: 1.8 million, more than any other country in the world. We are building a small country of these throwaway people. How can you expect literature from the refuse pile of humanity? Who would look for eloquence from convicts? Or insight or depth of thought or honesty or the intimacy of self-revelation? Watch for the self-serving subtext. When your heart is moved, can you trust it? When you feel for the writers of these words, are you being had? Cynicism about convicts is in our bones.

  Test this doubt by sampling these pages. The words in them have made their way into our hands against great odds. Several of these writers have done long stretches of time in the hole for their writing. Why, at such cost, do they write? Read their reasons in the back of this book. To bear witness, to stay sane, to keep their heart pumping, to not be eaten up by rage or despair, to figure out how they got there, or to discover what truly matters — these are just some of them.

  And then they hone their craft — if they’re lucky, in workshops, more often in the horrific din of the cellblock — learning to get past the words other people say to that voice of their own they almost doubt they have. Somehow they hear of the PEN prison writing contest, hear that at the very least someone will read what they wrote and write back. They decide to take a chance.

  I think this book is a significant piece of literature. What do you think? The writers are locked away from you, but you’ve already opened a door to their world. Step inside. You’ll never be the same.

  Sister Helen Prejean

  March 1999

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture of the Open Society Institute for awarding me a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship to pursue this project. I thank especially director Nancy Mahon, Katherine Diaz, Miriam Porter, Mart Cotter, and Soros Justice Fellows Joycelyn Pollock, Ellen Barry, and Angela Brown.

  My greatest debt is to all members of the PEN Prison Writing Program committee over the years who cared enoguh to read through the formidable mass of manuscript and to write something constructive to each contestant. And especially to our invaluable Prison Writing Program director, Jackson Taylor, and the current members of the committee who entrusted me with this task and pointed me in the direction of interesting work: Susan Braudy, Beth Dembitzer, Bob Hamburger, Starry Krueger, Claudia Menza, Janine Pommy Vega, Marie Ponsot, Rochelle Ratner, Sue Rosen, Joan Silber, Layle Silbert, and Chuck Wachtel. Members Fielding Dawson, Hettie Jones, Bibi Wein, and Jackson Taylor offered very useful reactions to my first raw selection. Anthologists Fielding, Janine, and Hettie also helped locate texts and ex-prisoners, Chuck and Marie offered poetic counsel, and Bibi editorial experience. Current chair Hettie was a ready ear and wise adviser every step of the way.

  For searching files and memories to recreate the story of PEN’s origins, I am grateful to Thomas Fleming, Lucy Kavaler, Vicki Lindner, Ann McGovern, Kathrin Perutz, and especially John Morrone, who for several years helped place prison writings in magazines. At PEN in the late eighties, Gara LaMarche helped rescue the PWP from near-death and later supported it materially from his position at the Open Society Institute. From the PEN staff, special thanks to PWP Coordinator Agustin Maes for swift provision of vital PWP materials. I appreciate the consistent backing of PEN American Center’s former and current executive directors, Karen Kennerly and Michael Roberts, and especially President Michael Scammel.

  From Fortune Society, Harvey Isaccs, Sheila Maroney, and Sylvia McKeane helped me locate past winners’ texts; so did Harry Smith, of the Smith, and Martin Tucker, of Confrontation. Anthologists and prison teachers Joe Bruchac, Janet Lembke, and Richard Shelton aided in locating authors. For generously sharing their myriad expertise, I thank Claudia Angelous, Jennie Brown, Raymond A. Brown, Scott Christianson, Lois Morris, H. Bruce Franklin, Jim Knipfel, Mark Mauer, Dorothy Potter, and Richard Stratton. I am indebted to John and Sue Leonard and the Nation for publishing my article on PEN prison writing.

  I thank Elizabeth Kronzek for archival research at Princeton, Brennan Grayson, Lesley Scammell, and Chloe Wheatley for research assistance, and Sara Lorimer, Bob deBarge, Grazyna Drabik, and Laura Schiller for typing the manuscript. I am blessed with friends who are passionately opinionated readers—Janet Brof, Bill DeMoss, Marilyn Katz, Danny Kaiser, Lee McClain, Antonia Meltzoff, Howard Waskow, Grey Wolfe, and Paul Chevigny.

  A writer could not ask for a more energetic agent than my friend Sydelle Kramer at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency nor a more sympathetic editor than Coates Bateman at Arcade Publishing.

  “Hands like yours help cup the flame,” William Orlando wrote in thanking PEN. The authors’ eloquent reminders of how much this work matters to them and others behind bars has made the work most gratifying. For generous research assistance, I thank especially William Aberg, Marilyn Buck, Chuck Culhane, Victor Hassine, Diane Hamill Metzger, Paul Mulryan, Charles Norman, Barbara Saunders, Joe Sissler, William Waters, and members of the writing workshop at Bedford Hills. And finally, I am forever indebted to those who got me started—my parolee students in the Queens SEEK Program in 1967–68 and my class at Westchester County Penitentiary, 1969–71, especially Charles Caldwell, whose example of self-transformation through reading and writing has stayed with me over the decades.

  Prison, the PEN Contest, and

  Doing Time with Words:

  An Updated Introduction

  Life in prison in the late seventies was good for those who knew how to serve their time, to be strong, to mind their own business, to not get involved with drugs, alcohol, gambling, loansharking, or other deathtraps guaranteed to bring men down. One could go to school, earn a high school equivalency diploma, study college correspondence classes, take vocational classes and learn a trade, take self-improvement programs to learn to be a better person, go to religious services, attend AA, learn how to create works of art to earn spending money through classes in arts and crafts, share relaxed visits on weekends with loved ones, behave themselves, and earn their release on parole. They could go home. Now the emphasis is containment, storage, and warehousing of growing inventories of faceless, psychotropically over-medicated zombie felons. The keys have been thrown away.

  —Charles Norman, Tomoka Correctional Facility, Daytona Beach, Florida

  I write because I can’t fly.

  —Jackie Ruzas, Shawangunk Correctional Facility, Walkill, New York

  No one ever said it better than the prison writer Fyodor Dostoevsky— to paraphrase: you can measure the level of a civilization by entering its prisons. What does it say about the level of our civilization that we imprison more human beings than any country in the world? As most of us do not enter prisons, we need those inside to show us what is done in our name and with our taxes. Fortunately, PEN American Center, the writers’ association, has been sponsoring an annual literary contest nationwide for writers behind bars since 1973. Doing Time presents the best work of the winners from the first twenty-five years. By bearing witness to the secret world that isolates and silences them, these writers offer an incisive anatomy of the contemporary prison and an intimate view of men and women struggling to keep their humanity alive.

  To put this work in context, here’s a brief history of the shift in American attitudes toward prisoners and the goals of incarceration in the last five decades. Fifty years ago there was wide acceptance of rehabilitative programs, a growing prisoners’ rights movement, and an unprecedented interest in prisoners’ writing.

  The social turmoil of the sixties and early seventies profoundly shaped public attitudes toward prisoners. The civil rights and student movements and opposition to the Vietnam war created a climate critical of established authority and sympathetic to those held down by it. In rapid succession, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Native Americans, women, and gay people developed self-awareness and political consciousness and demanded recognition. In response, American culture grew more receptive to the voices and needs of minorities. And for a while the War on Pov
erty was committed to building a more participatory democracy by offering opportunity to the poor and the marginalized.

  Prisoners, especially (but not only) African-American male prisoners, played a strong role in these explosive times. The Autobiography of Malcolm X awakened readers to the powerful claims of this dispossessed group, and showed how a man could find himself and his voice behind bars. Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, and Angela Davis soon followed, influencing activists, black and white, with their social analyses. And when movement activists were jailed, they helped politicize prison culture. Inmates began to compare incarceration with slavery, to call themselves political prisoners, and to protest conditions rather than fight with one another.

  A prisoners’ movement began to grow outside as well. In New York in 1967 David Rothenberg produced Fortune and Men’s Eyes, a play by Canadian ex-convict John Herbert that brought to life the devastating effects of imprisonment for one young man. When a member of the audience challenged the play’s authenticity after one performance, an ex-con rose from the audience to defend it. As more ex-convicts came to the theater, some making public their past for the first time, the post-curtain debate became as absorbing as the play. Rothenberg’s theater office evolved into the first office of the Fortune Society, an organization that provides a therapeutic community for ex-prisoners and advocates criminal justice reform.

  Dramatizing the social upheaval of the nineteen-sixties were the inner-city riots that became more destructive with each summer and helped spark riots behind the razor wire. Forty-eight riots were reported from 1968 through 1971, every one growing in intensity, the coherence of its racial or political ideology, and organization. In 1970, riots in New York rocked Manhattan’s Tombs and the upstate Auburn Prison. In July 1971, a “Liberation Faction” of prisoners in Attica Prison presented the corrections commissioner with demands to change “brutal, dehumanized” conditions. In California, on August 21, 1971, George Jackson was killed in an alleged escape attempt from San Quentin. The next day, Attica prisoners protested with a mass hunger strike. On September 9, they seized the prison, killing one guard and three inmates. The uncompromising state response four days later was a police assault that wounded 128 and took thirty-nine lives, ten of them hostages.