from PATERSON LITERARY REVIEW
My mother used to insist that living next door
to the penitentiary and state reform schools
was a good thing, reasoning
that escapees’ first priority
would be distance between themselves
and the confines they’d left behind.
That’s the story she would try to sell us kids but we knew better, knew about the boys who’d ducked from the shower line at Socanasett, slipped newborn and naked out of sight of the guards, freedom came that naturally to them.
When the clothes went missing
from a neighbor’s line we understood the boys
were not cold, or suddenly shy but
crafty, looking to blend back in
with those of us who didn’t yet know what they knew: the true worth of one’s own skin and what it can cost to own it.
Nominated by Paterson Literary Review, Lee Upton