This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....


Tuesday 8 July 2008

Screw

Usually the screws were polite
when I entered the prison
to work with poets. Only
this day I was late.

It was Visiting Day. I lined up
with others just arriving.
Women mostly: wives,
girlfriends, mothers.

The blonde in uniform
barged through us,
shoving contemptuously hard
with her shoulders and hips.

Glaring, we knew
not to protest.
I realised right then
I was one of — not them, us.



[Poem #10]
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