by Jimmy Santiago Baca
A little state-funded barrack
in the desert, in a prison. A poetry workshop,
an epicenter of originality, companionship,
pain, and openness.
For some,
the first time in their life writing,
for others the first time saying openly what they felt,
the first time finding something in themselves,
worthwhile, ugly and beautiful.
I think of you and me. Last night I was
thinking of you. I am your friend. I don’t want you
to think otherwise.
I was thinking, when we first wrote to each other,
I remember instances, of tremendous joy
when receiving your letters,
what cells I was in,
what emotional state, under
what circumstances.
Your letters always fell like meteorites
into my lap.
You were my first friendship
engendered in this state, perhaps,
all my past life.
I showed you my first poem ever written,
“They Only Came to See the Zoo”
But you didn’t treat me like a wild ape
or an elephant, you treated me like Jimmy.
And who was Jimmy?
A mass of molten fury in this furnace of steel,
and yet, my thoughts became ladles, sifting carefully
through my life, the pain and endurance,
to the essence of my being,
I gently, into the long night, unmolding
my shielded heart, the fierce figures
of war and loss, I remolding them,
my despair and anger into a cry and a song,
I took the path alone, nuded myself to my own caged animals,
and learned their tongues and learned their spirits,
and roamed the desert, went to my place of birth …
Now tonight, I am the burning bush,
my bones a grill of fire,
I burn these words in praise,
of our meeting, our friendship.
(Jimmy Santiago Baca is an award-winning poet and writer of Chicano descent who served five years in a maximum-security prison. Unable to read or write when he entered prison, Baca turned his life around to become a prolific artist of the spoken and written word. He has conducted workshops in prisons, libraries, and universities across the United States for over 30 years since his parole.
Baca’s A Place to Stand won the International Award for Best Memoir. It was subsequently made into a documentary film. His book Martin & Meditations on South Valley received the American Book Award for Poetry and the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature. Beside these works, he has written a dozen books of poetry and published numerous essays and stories. He wrote the screenplay Blood In Blood Out, which was made into the feature-length film Bound by Honor.)
Republished from “Perspectives from the Cell Block: An Anthology of Prisoner Writings” – edited by Joan Parkin in collaboration with incarcerated people from Mule Creek State Prison.
