{#289-128}
eBook - PDF

{#289-128}

Poems

  1. 104 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

{#289-128}

Poems

About this book

"Forgive state poet #289-128 / for not scribbling illusions / of trickery as if timeless hell / could be captured by stanzas / alliteration or slant rhyme," remarks the speaker, Maryland Department of Corrections prisoner {#289-128}, early in this haunting collection. Three sections—{#289-128} Property of the State, {#289-128} Poet-in-Residence (Cell 23), and {#289-128} Poet in New York—frame the countless ways in which the narrator's body and life are socially and legally rendered by the state even as the act of poetry helps him reclaim an identity during imprisonment.

These poems address the prison industrial complex, the carceral state, the criminal justice system, racism, violence, love, resilience, hope, and despair while exploring the idea of freedom in a cell. In the tradition of Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt, and Etheridge Knight's The Essential Etheridge Knight, {#289-128} challenges the language of incarceration—especially the ways in which it reinforces stigmas and stereotypes.

Though {#289-128} refuses to be defined as a felon, this collection viscerally details the dehumanizing effects of prison, which linger long after release. It also illuminates the ways in which we all are relegated to cells or boundaries, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

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Yes, you can access {#289-128} by Randall Horton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & American Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. Testimonials
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. {#289-128} Property of the State
  8. Animals
  9. Untitled
  10. Don’t Trust the Process
  11. The Making of {#289-128} In Five Parts
  12. Sorry This Not That Poem
  13. Rhetorical, Perhaps
  14. .Or. This Malus Thing Never to be Confused with Justice
  15. Escorting the Criminal Justice Advocate Through State Prison
  16. Couonterproductive Definitions within the Criminal Justice System (I)
  17. Nothing As It Seems
  18. Unreliable Narrator
  19. Roxbury Correctional Book Club
  20. How to Become the Invisible Man
  21. Quiet Before the Storm in the Dayroom
  22. When Bullets Miss but Memory Lives
  23. Counterproductive Definitions within the Criminal Justice System (2)
  24. {#289-128} Poet-in-Residence (Cell 23)
  25. On Reflection
  26. Aesthetic Beauty I Remember I Think
  27. Photograph of My Girl Winter on 135th & Broadway Taped to the Wall
  28. In A Dream The Silent
  29. But She Wasn’t from My Geographical Location
  30. Dear Etheridge (2)
  31. Abracadabra
  32. Trouble the Water
  33. When the Government Doesn’t Love You (The EIghties)
  34. Open Air Market on Herkimer & Nostrand, Brooklyn (1989)
  35. 1990 (A Forecast)
  36. Sex Workers on Smoke Break 1994
  37. When Your Silence Will Not Save You
  38. Untitled
  39. Black Male Privilege
  40. Before the Beauty .Or. How Could U Forget?
  41. {#289-128} Poet in New York
  42. Remember
  43. {#289-128} — Still Invisible, Too
  44. A Primer for Surviving a Traffic Stop
  45. Americans in Times Equare
  46. On the Hudson River at Piers Park
  47. Riverside Drive State Park
  48. Randy Weston’s African Rhythms Concert, The Day After
  49. Beware of the Bandleader
  50. Ars Poetica (3): Stay Woke
  51. Subway Chronicles
  52. Walking with Ghost in Harlem
  53. Ars Poetica (1): Art as Propaganda
  54. After Ruin
  55. Acknowledgments
  56. Series Page