UNIT 29 Writing from Parchman Prison
Edited by Louis Bourgeois
Vox Press, Oxford, MS
2024, 215 pages
$19.99
Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover: on the front, prison buildings and a guard tower surrounded by a razor wire fence; on the back, a tall metal archway, a dirt road passing through to a field. At the top of the archway, the word CEMETERY. And just below, on a crossbar, as if to bear a second witness: PARCHMAN CEMETERY. The cover is black & white, but a more apt description would be bleached of color. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”1 comes to mind, but I would be wrong to assume this.
The dedication is “to the memory of Christopher Smith,” who took his life,” but it is framed as a rational, dignified choice, not a suicide: “He died by his own will and by his own hand.” In his diary entries, THOUGHTS and END GAME, he wrestles mightily with God for a reason to live and finds it in his mother, who nurtured him when he was young. Now that she is old with health problems, he should be there for her. During a phone call on New Year’s Day (2023), he shares a sweet moment: “She took three shots of Tequila Rose… two for me and one for her.” But when he learns on January 12 that she died the week before, he offers this loving wisdom in FINAL EXIT, his last words: “…if you have people to be free for cherish it and always let them know how much you wish you were there for them and love them because that is freedom in itself.”
The epitaph frames the book with a question — a moral imperative we are compelled to reckon with. See NOTES for readings that explore the second meaning of Am I my brother’s keeper?
The prison system, inherently unjust and inhumane, is the ultimate expression of injustice and inhumanity in the society at large. Those of us on the outside do not like to think of wardens and guards as our surrogates. Yet they are, and they are intimately locked in a deadly embrace with their captives behind the prison walls. By extension, so are we.
A troubling double meaning is thus imparted to the original question of human ethics: Am I my brother’s keeper? 2
So let us begin the day with Anthony Cathey’s KITCHEN PUNCH LINE JELLS.
The narrative opens with two sentences, abandons formal punctuation, and begins to blow word jazz, inviting us not only to read but also to listen and move our bodies in the breath space of the word/music.
Day started off early in the morning, around 2:00 AM. getting up and ready for the kitchen. I started off by getting the food out of the warehouse and cold freeze. Coming out the warehouse be a 50 lb. bag of grits, a 50 lb. bag of biscuit mix four cans of grape Jelly then go over to the cold storage and get the boxes of chicken patties, two boxes of butter then take everything towards the cooking area the Baker is Griffin he started making the biscuit by putting the biscuit mix inside the mixer and putting butter on 16 pan for the biscuit mix four cans of grape jelly then went over to the cold storage and get the boxes of chicken patties, two boxes of butter then take everything towards the cooking area the baker is Griffin he started making the biscuit by putting the biscuit mix inside the mixer and putting butter on 16 pan for the biscuit to go in the oven is melting the butter for the biscuit and you have Joe cool his one of the cooks that’s helping preparing the kitchen patties and waiting on the water to heat up before he put the grits on him and Blood do these together before then one of them put 9 sticks of butter inside the water that’s heating up for the grits and salt & pepper in the water and we bring the coffee and juice from the warehouse either Joe Cool or Blood might do it while Joe Cool stirring the grits while Blood pour the 50 lb. bag in the pot.
The calling and purpose of this collection are summarized In Nathan Sumrall’s personal essay, MY LIFE IN PRISON. “Not everyone can draw, or sew, or tattoo…. But anyone can write, because everyone has a unique story to tell. Writing can lead to freedom faster than any hobby we can have. We live under a rock in prison, hidden from the minds of society. If we never attempt to step into the light with our writings, and expose ourselves to the public, we will rot in prison.”
HOME OF THE FREE, by Victor Perryman, is a brilliant acrostic poem (each line begins with a letter of the alphabet, from A to Z), a primer that condenses the entire criminal justice system, from crime to punishment: “A is for allegedly. I allegedly committed this crime. / B is for bail. I had to bond out of jail. / …F is for fraud. I deceived the Fed. Gov. for S.S. check. /…P is for prosecution. The prosecuting attorney gave me 50 mandatory. / …Z is for zebra stripe. When you go through the judicial system, you get a striped uniform.”
“A scar is an interesting thing,” writes Steve Willbanks in SCARS. “Some look cool. Some look ugly. But the scars that affect us the most can’t even be seen. Cut deep, down to the bone, and often break our hearts.” Sentenced to Death by Lethal Injection, he uses his time on Death Row to study for a Paralegal Certification, finds his rights were violated, wins an appeal, and is sentenced to life without parole. “The best thing I can think to do with all of these scars—psychological and physical—is to learn to live with them. Embrace them, accept them for what they are, Proof that I am human.”
FORGOTTEN by Arthur Lestrik is a lyrical poem that falls in the shadowland between lamentation and dirge, an acceptance of one’s fate for transgressing, and eventual death in bondage.
As the years pass beyond the looking glass: I’m forgotten. As this coffin sinks six feet deep, so traditionally and your memories fade of me: I’m forgotten.
As my children grow and my nights are lost in limbo: I’m forgotten. …
As the night comes and the moon goes, leaving me to dance alone with the devil in the pale moonlight: I am forgotten.
[…] As my skin loosens and my smile droops: I’m forgotten. …
As the trees grow and the leaves blow: I am forgotten.
But as the poem pivots to the final stanza, something remarkable happens. Through the repetition of the refrain, “I am forgotten,” the poet has an epiphany — the original transgression was being transgressed upon — his ancestors were sold into slavery.
Being forgotten is experiencing Death, my ancestors knew that it was better to leap for life than to live in bondage.
The artwork folded among the writings adds a visual dimension to this collection. The black and white pencil drawings are exquisitely rendered. They range in style, from brutalism — Azazel by Corey Carrol depicting the fallen angel Azazel being tortured in multiple ways for introducing humans to forbidden knowledge, according to the Book of Enoch; the sacred — The Praying Convict of 29 by Anthony Wilson, light pouring through the window bars of a cell illuminate a prisoner kneeling before the bible, the holy dove hovering before him, and a scroll where the prisoner’s prayer is scribed;
and a portrait, Office Judy by Leon Johnson. She is facing us in her uniform as if giving an order. Her stance is authoritative and at ease, and there is a hint of warmth in her lips, perhaps a stern affection for the prisoners in her keep. Written on the wall behind her: CAPTAIN JUDY – UNIT = 29 COUNT. Johnson has a poem to go with the artwork which mirrors the respect of the inmates:
OFFICER JUDY GIVES INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LOCK DOWN INMATES.
When Officer Judy
Makes her daily rounds to count,
She smell piss, toe jam
Dirty clothes, work out
Sweat, old food and
Do do, and Just old
Shower musk.Officer Judy say, I want
Those beds made, I want
Floors swept and bleach
mop, toilets, lysol clean,
bars dusted, and a steel
Brush, to scrub those
thick yellow stains off
Of that dirty wall.Officer Judy, say
clean up, and walk off of
The ZONE.
There is no introduction or foreword (or afterword), no table of contents, and no chapters or section breaks. Just the prisoners and their writings — rough, holy, deadly, immediate,3 brutally honest, and unsparingly critical of Parchman. A spiritual thread is woven throughout, invoking God in both presence and absence — and grace for living day by day. It is as if we are thrown into prison just as the men were. We become their cellmates. In a sense, we are not reading but listening; in doing so, we bear witness.
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NOTES
Recommended reading:
Richard Cambridge’s poetry and theater productions address controversial themes on the American political landscape. From 1998 to 2000, he travelled to Cuba four times as co-founding member (with Patiño Vázquez) of Singing with the Enemy, a troupe of poets, musicians and performance artists. The show, ¡EMBARGO!, a dramatic mural of poetry, music, and dance, portrayed the four decade economic blockade on the people of Cuba. By special invitation, the troupe performed in Havana, Cuba in July 1998 at the historic First U.S.—Cuba Friendship Conference.
Richard was also commissioned by the National Lawyers Guild of Cuba to write and perform a poem for their yearly conference, “From the Belly of the Beast” (1998) and “Letter from Cuba,” (1999). In November 2000 he performed at the World Solidarity with Cuba Conference, in Havana, Cuba.
In 2001, he co-founded ¡PRESENTE! with former African American political prisoner Kazi Touré. In collaboration with local artists and imprisoned activists, PRESENTE! is a dramatic tapestry of poetry, music, dance, mask, mime and ritual that brings awareness to political prisoners and prisoners of war in the U.S.
A longtime resident of Cambridge, MA, he received the Cambridge Peace and Justice Award for his art and activism. He has published poetry, PULSA—A Book of Books (Hanover Press), and a spoken word CD One Shot News—Poetry of Conscience (Earthshine Productions). His awards include The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize; a finalist for a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.
He is a Fellow Emeritus at the Black Earth Institute, a progressive think tank based in Wisconsin. He guest edited Volume II Issue IV of About Place, the institute’s online journal, whose theme was 1963-2013: A Civil Rights Retrospective. http://archive.aboutplacejournal.org/civil-rights/
His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine, About Place, the Asheville Poetry Journal, and other publications. He curates the Poets’ Theater at Somerville’s Arts at the Armory, and is the poetry editor for The Lunar Calendar. He is working on his second novel, 1970, an alternate history of that year in which a band of activists led by Black Panthers spark revolution in the U.S.
