On Confinement

I sit across the table from my accomplice

in the chamber of the mental holding office

our hands churched into our laps. We are not permitted

to contact. The air between us thick as Perspex.

They let me know every one of the manners in which this spot looks like a jail.

•

Everything a clean white

so perfect it could nearly sanitize

a memory.

•

In 1787,

Jeremy Bentham considered what might turn into

the most well-known jail plan:

the panopticon.

Expected to control detainees through the deception

that they are generally under reconnaissance.

•

My accomplice tells their advisor

they fear taking

their own life,

that they adjusted on a structure's edge,

& three officials escort them from the room.

•

The very first cop who cuffed me

[was my father]

left me bound

till my fingers blued.

On the days when I can't recollect

his face,

he turns into the aroma of

vodka and zip ties

the sound of

sleeves and a jug

petaling into edges.

•

At the booking office they eliminate my glasses

& the watchmen obscure into a parade

of fathers.

•

I bring my accomplice garments and cushions

at the point when the emergency clinic chooses to hold them longer,

push each shirt that could stamp them

as eccentric back inside the storage room and shut it [like a mouth].

•

The word faggot scribbles across

the prison watchman's lips like spray painting.

•

At the point when I visit my accomplice

they demand remaining inside

the sky above

the porch cordoned

off with chicken wire.

•

I argue my sentence down

in return for: my face, my prints, my DNA

& a decade probation.

At the point when I see a cop, I dread

indeed, even my breath

criminal

& at the point when my advisor asks me

in the event that I'm self-destructive

I lie.

Maybe

both are a sort

of reconnaissance.

•

Nerve gas floods the road,

hones water to an edge

secret in the circle of my eye.

& very much like this, a crew vehicle

changes my trouble a weapon.

In the event that my accomplice snaps sleeves

around my wrists

[& I requested this]

have they likewise weaponized

my craving?

•

A lady in the office

tells my accomplice:

I understand what you are.

Says:

Delinquent.

Says:

Hostile to christ.

My accomplice spurs her on,

chatters in bogus

tongues and is bound

to their space for security.

•

Once, a cop hauled me

into a rear entryway and

beat me like he knew

precisely what I was.

What does it say if here and there

at the point when I request that my accomplice hit me

I anticipate his clench hand

fixed in their throat, his voice

swelling their tongue?

•

I'm captured and put

[in the men's jail]

in isolation.

They let me know this is defensive

authority. That they couldn't manage

the claim assuming I were killed. Along these lines,

they let me know I'm a lady

just when I'm no more

relaxing.

•

The beginning of the word jail

is the Latin prehendere — to take.

It follows, then,

that to bring your life is to jail

the body underneath soil.

•

[All things considered,

A self destruction is a criminal act].

•

Adjusted on a structure's edge, I envision

some change of this second

where to come up short at death

would be a break

of my probation.

•

We both sob interestingly

upon discharge

at the point when we see the sky.

Light blue

cut through

with a solitary helix

of razor wire and lined

in clean white.