Roll Call

Six times every day we stand at the thresholds

of our cells to be counted, to be matched against

the roster of mugs the guards clutch and riffle

like assembly instructions as they tramp the ranges,

always in twos, keys piggy-bank chanking,

at night waggling their flashlights in our faces.

We’re inmates, felons, fuckups, we don’t exactly

present in clenched attention, we’re not the ribbed

column of a military review, most of us

can’t keep still for more than a few seconds.

Slim, for instance, slaps his thigh like to summon

a puppy. O G nods assuredly to no one

in particular. My neighbor, Bird, his long, lean

face creeping from behind the wall, a hunted look,

awning his lips with a tremulous hand, urges

a wispy gossip into the firmament.

And my slough-eyed cellie slumped squeezing an invisible

Bible between his knees, an origami toadstool

of khaki poking through his open fly, chuffs air

aggressively in and out of his nose because he read it will

get you high. I must seem dull and self-righteous, still

too stunned to fidget, holding my fists like I’m lifting

a wheelbarrow. As the COs approach, I bow

my head. In the cement floor’s tarnish, its boot-bruised

mezzotint, I’ll find a face, unnervingly genuine,

grave lineaments, true conviction, and sometimes

among these smudges, in the crude marbling, mercy.