[ search ]
In the beginning the guard’s gloved hands
pat you down, searching for weapons,
his touch is weaponized, the muted duty
of his movements smooth along each of your arms.
Soon the guard’s touch is the only touch
from another
and you think of your mother
after bath time, the harbour of her chest
against yours, the rough-love of her towelling
you dry, reaching into all the nooks
and crannies, no cabbages behind the ears
she says. And yes, I guess searching the body
is another way of saying the body is a trove
of treasure and your touch a torch.
(Seren)
Somewhere between the lyrical and plain graphic, Angola, America by Sammy Weaver blends empathy and humanity with raw, often visceral accounts of the infamous Louisiana maximum-security prison on the East side of the Mississippi River. In these correspondence-poems between an inmate on death row and a woman living in a narrowboat in the UK, Waver gives a voice to both a taboo subject and white guilt, as well as the cruelty of racialised politics and institutionalised imprisonment of Black people in America. Imaginatively and poignantly written, Weaver’s first pamphlet is a must-read, even as one often has to pause while encountering her timely, unnerving.
