Punishment

February 19, 2019

“Growing Apples” by Nancy Miller GomezPosted by

[Video by Blank Verse Films: A Poet’s Space, Episode 2]

__________

Nancy Miller Gomez

GROWING APPLES

There is big excitement in C block today.
On the window sill,
in a plastic ice cream cup
a little plant is growing.
This is all the men want to talk about:
how an apple seed germinated
in a crack of damp concrete;
how they tore open tea bags
to collect the leaves, leached them
in water, then laid the sprout onto the bed
made of Lipton. How this finger of spring
dug one delicate root down
into the dark fannings and now
two small sleeves of green
are pushing out from the emerging tip.
The men are tipsy with this miracle.
Each morning, one by one,
they go to the window and check
the progress of the struggling plant.
All through the day they return
to stand over the seedling
and whisper.

—from Punishment
Rattle Chapbook Series Selection

__________

Nancy Miller Gomez: “Poetry helps me to make emotional sense of my life. Each poem is a struggle to clarify something I don’t yet understand.” (web)

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August 21, 2018

“Invoking the Muse in Cell Block B” by Nancy Miller GomezPosted by

Nancy Miller Gomez

INVOKING THE MUSE IN CELL BLOCK B

There is a heavy sucking
when the door swings open
and a dull clank when it locks.
The men enter the classroom
and open their notebooks.
One taps the table.
One covers his eyes and yawns.
Another gets up and paces
as if he is circling a flight path.
Sometimes it takes a while for the stories
to come out. But then, a mouthful of tacks,
baby shoes, a bat cracked across a small boy’s arm.
They gather these images like kindling
to try to ignite the darkness.
The walls sweat like a submarine.
The air hangs dank and mossy.
There’s an odd Doppler shift of footsteps
as guards come and go, their shapeless voices rising
and falling in the halls. A fluorescent hum glows
off the greenish paint slopped onto cinderblock
so thick it looks like molded cheese.
A man with broken glasses scans the dictionary.
Raven noose, he says, and writes it down.
Ravenous. His neighbor draws crosses
on the palms of his hands.
The alarm blinks its red eye.
What is true about a swastika
etched into a man’s forehead?
Why does it matter if he still dreams
of nights in a cold stairwell,
pallets burning under a bridge,
the sound of his grandmother singing?
They are still waiting in this moonless place.
Children waiting for mothers,
mothers waiting for children
now grown to have children
waiting for them, waiting for wives
or lovers, a visitor, another day. Nothing.
Each scar provides its own dark facts.
What if the thesis is a bottle smashed
on a body? What if the body
can’t grow wings?
The man with the teardrop
tattooed on his cheek
holds the ink tube of a pen
as if it is breathing,
and stares up at a skylight
so dirty it might be night.

—from Punishment
Rattle Chapbook Series Selection

__________

Nancy Miller Gomez: “Poetry helps me to make emotional sense of my life. Each poem is a struggle to clarify something I don’t yet understand.” (web)

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July 5, 2018

“Stand Off” by Nancy Miller GomezPosted by

Nancy Miller Gomez

STAND OFF

There are 14 men in the lunchroom. Some are sitting in chairs, some standing,
some prowling around the edges of the room. They are men who have grown
used to being on a schedule, and this is snack time. They are waiting for a door
to open and a cart to come out. Sometimes it’s oranges, sometimes apples. But today
they have been here too long. Impatience builds like snow before an avalanche.
We want our fruit, they say. But the man watching from the protected enclosure
tells them, You’ve already had your fruit. Eyes narrow, arms cross. No, they say.
We’ve been waiting. And no one has brought the fruit. The man behind glass
repeats into the speaker, You’ve already had your fruit. It was there on the tray.
And now it’s gone. Where’s the tray? the men say. Where’s the fruit? Their hands
fly up in protest like a flock of startled birds. They have NOT had their fruit.
The man in the booth looks at me as if I am the witness who will save him.
Maybe I will say that I too saw the fruit. Only I’ve just arrived. I haven’t seen
anything. I stand there outside the guard station with my backpack filled
with poems watching the men watch me. Is it possible it’s still in the kitchen?
the instructor of the class before mine suggests. She wants these men
to come back to the room where she is teaching them life skills: how to balance
a checkbook, how to find a job, how to be honest in a world that isn’t.
She knows they won’t pay attention until they’ve had their fruit.
Can I just go to the kitchen and look? she asks, and everyone quiets to hear
what the man will say. Then he passes the key through the bulletproof portal.
It scrapes across the metal. She scoops it into her hand and heads to the kitchen.
Everyone waits. Minutes later she re-appears carrying a tray piled with 14 bananas.
The men form a circle around her, each in turn taking one, and then
they are eating and no one talks. Now they aren’t angry men.
They are hungry boys who have just been fed.

—from Punishment
Rattle Chapbook Series Selection

__________

Nancy Miller Gomez: “Poetry helps me to make emotional sense of my life. Each poem is a struggle to clarify something I don’t yet understand.” (web)

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