the national poetry month issue || angola
TRANSCRIPT
University of Northern Iowa
AngolaAuthor(s): Kwala MandelSource: The North American Review, Vol. 286, No. 2, The National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. -Apr., 2001), p. 13Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25126567 .
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NAR
KWALA MANDEL
Angola
The Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola is the largest maximum-security
prison in the United States. It houses some 5,000 men, three-quarters of them black. The 18,000-acrepenitentiary is on a plantation that derived its name from the area in Africa that provided the slave labor.
i.
In maximum security prison
they keep the hope alive?it swims
like an underfed goldfish for the good ones who want better. I walk these halls,
go gray, remembering my God and Parole and making peace within these walls. I never did care for gold fish. I have been misled by bright scales.
ii.
On holidays they broadcast Gospel
through the cells, trapping me in prisms of their God-wailing. I watch the Mississippi eat her banks, bend beneath the rain, and early mornings I pray the levies will break and send Angola under
water (short-circuit the chairs).
Already the river is higher than the roads
and someone has emptied the farm
of horse and chicken.
iii.
A clown comes in at Christmas and steps down the halls with the chaplain? two white-collared hope-holders
of ruffles and crosses. They offer up their awkward hearts and wave down
the Row, showing wide, white smiles
that insist we all be merry tonight. Jesus, walk with me the carolers sing to our prison speakers. They are afraid
of what we might do if we cry on this eve.
Jesus walks with me, I tell the clown?
I dream each night of orange groves. He blinks his purple eyelids twice, and his floppy shoes slap out the door?metal swings to metal, latches lock, clicking shut.
Over the silent, holy night.
iv.
Eighty-percent of us die waiting for one last document to set us free.
On Tuesday, it is my turn. I take the bus to death?Camp F?and see the world
is bright, new beyond chain links. The window lets the sun in
and it is rising. The chaplain says
everyone is crossing
fingers that I make Heaven. I smile through the raw
crawfish, crackers, coke
and leave my remains?
ice melting, fish on the bone.
FINALISTS JAMES HEARST POETRY PRIZE
March/April 2001 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 13
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