Michele Madigan Somerville
ESCAPE FROM PAIN
Jailers first used the “Bloody Straitjacket” for wringing
information out. (Where are the guns?) The full-body
wrapping was tight so as to induce a feeling of being buried
alive. The numbness and secretions were like acid,
the sensation of being squeezed to death
as by a giant boa constrictor.
The first time was a boa constrictor.
The second time was a charm.
The second time
they laced me in.
My consciousness departed
the body. The long arm of
the law one
might say
coiled
about
my torso
but
I made
a break
for it
I travelled
freely out beyond the walls
of San Quentin, a prison named after
Quintinus,
who was tortured for holding
fast
(until death) to his faith.
The first time, Quintinus
escaped.
“miraculously.”
The second time, Quintinus
lost his head
under the Diocletian Persecution.
The next time, astonished
by the first
break
the wardens ordered the guards
to lace a second jacket
over the first. Following each
incident of torture
the guards found me
in good spirits
following exquisite escapes to spots
I chose
to go gliding into
the breathing
world
beyond
prison,
walls.
I returned, rested,
refreshed, able
to recount events and to report upon
what good I had sought
and had seen
in the course
of these excursions,
I
executed
amid evil and
what I found therein
inhering
were tests
of our human
response to cruelty, that called
upon
the might
of our capacity to rise.
—
Note: * Edward H. "Ed" Morrell (October 22, 1868 – November 10, 1946) was an American convict, activist, and writer. The author of the The 25th Man, he was known as the “dungeon man of San Quentin,” served time in Folsom State Prison and San Quentin for serving as an accomplice in the robbery of the Southern Pacific Railroad. He spent five years in solitary confinement, was pardoned in 1908.
THE NOTE
1.
“I’m not gonna do it next time. Next time she sends for me.
Wee Oxford hard leather clacks on high-
gloss corridor rat-maze bound nose of paint-job
near color, neutralizing institution green. Descend
a partitioned staircase. Scarlet "EXIT" serves
as a reminder there are doors. 2 hours 'till 3.
Oranges, Lysol, tomato soup and “lavatory”
pee smell comprise what permeates.
Arrive. Peer through the rectangular blue vein
of perpendiculars in glass. Spy the holy witch
before the board beneath the cross and flag and
alphabet banner. Knock. Enter.
{It could get lost in the bottom of my schoolbag.}
2
Recite, don't speak:
“Good Afternoon, Sister.”
Synchronous heads crane. 90 six year-old eyes
all on me follow as I cross and approach the great desk.
“Take this home to your mother, dear.”
3
One night when the room was quiet
and the cold was more outside than in,
and heat was the only thing warm, sounding,
hissing. Clanging like wrenches,
like bells on fire, voice of its gaseous state,
mounting, clamoring clambering up
the city pipes diffusing sweet woolly coming up
scent — this, before the last of the homefield
peace had been shot, bled out, I lay tiny
thinking in my bed, heavy with drifting off.
I could hear you were awake. I whispered across the room to you in the other top bunk.
“I’m not gonna do it next time."
“Do what?”
“Next time she sends a first grader up for me."
“You have to.”
“I could say I lost it. It could get crumpled at the bottom of my bookbag.”
“It'll just be worse if you don’t.”
4
It was always after lunch on Friday
when I walked the way of
"the good one"— promenade of
the cheese-eater,
drop a dime for Jesus walk,
Baby Judas walk.
Brother's keeper, winner take all,
Jacob and Esau walk.
Let the right-hand squeal
on what the Southpaw does.
Formation. Divide and conquer.
Christus victor. The plan is ever to beat
the living daylights out,
beat the living Jesus out —
Bury your brother and take his cloak.
Turn you into a Cain and somebody wins.
Talk all morning about mercy.
After lunch, spit in its face.
Winner take haul.
You were 6. I was 7,
7 like the days, 7 like minutes in Heaven,
like 7 brides for 7 brothers,
7 Samarai, 7 sacraments,
7 seas and siete mariscos.
What a frantic air-sucking guppy I was,
but you were a swimmer, even at 6.
Even at 6 you were brave
in love and learned to live
as only one who knows they
will always come
after you from whom I learned
imagination. They would always
chase you down
if you dared,
for being sinister or sinful,
lazy-eyed, left-handed,
or something worse,
yet you dared.
The dispatch was ideally timed
to crash
into Friday afterschool
rising
designed to dash
its subject's weekend, messenger
and mark to smithereens
for Our Lord
by means of the stroke of a pen,
a margin-
to-margin
effort addressed to Mrs. Somebody.
Envelope, seal, swipe
of a wasted tongue
because really, what might women
who don’t even have buttholes or hair
beneath all that starch and black
possibly know about
the
hell
of being
a kid
as gentle
as God ought to be.
Michele Madigan Somerville is an award-winning poet and the author of three books (poetry): Glamourous Life, Black Irish and WISEGAL. Her work has appeared in numerous journals — Brooklyn Review, Poetry Project Newsletter, New York Times, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Peripheries, Puerto del Sol, Hanging Loose — to cite a few. She taught creative writing and essay writing in the New York City and State public universities for several years before she worked as a classroom teacher of elementary and secondary students in New York City schools. She continues, at present, to work as a tutor with New York City public school students and is working on an educational memoir about the politics and ethics of education. She currently lives between Brooklyn, New York and Cambridge Massachusetts.