Roll Call
Six times every day we stand at the thresholds
of our cells to be counted, to be matched against
the roster of mugs the guards clutch and riffle
like assembly instructions as they tramp the ranges,
always in twos, keys piggy-bank chanking,
at night waggling their flashlights in our faces.
We’re inmates, felons, fuckups, we don’t exactly
present in clenched attention, we’re not the ribbed
column of a military review, most of us
can’t keep still for more than a few seconds.
Slim, for instance, slaps his thigh like to summon
a puppy. O G nods assuredly to no one
in particular. My neighbor, Bird, his long, lean
face creeping from behind the wall, a hunted look,
awning his lips with a tremulous hand, urges
a wispy gossip into the firmament.
And my slough-eyed cellie slumped squeezing an invisible
Bible between his knees, an origami toadstool
of khaki poking through his open fly, chuffs air
aggressively in and out of his nose because he read it will
get you high. I must seem dull and self-righteous, still
too stunned to fidget, holding my fists like I’m lifting
a wheelbarrow. As the COs approach, I bow
my head. In the cement floor’s tarnish, its boot-bruised
mezzotint, I’ll find a face, unnervingly genuine,
grave lineaments, true conviction, and sometimes
among these smudges, in the crude marbling, mercy.
