This poem was submitted by Hettie Jones as part of the 2015 PEN World Voices Online Anthology. It was written about her many years of experience teaching at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York State’s maximum security prison for women.
Hettie Jones’s event: Writing on the Inside, Reading on the Outside: Exploring the Work of Prison Writers and Their Mentors
Mother Moon surfs the sky
rides the white cap clouds
Mother Moon is a visitor over the Bedford Hills
Penitentiary
climbing the barbed wire
the old brick
the young woman
wondering whether
she’ll bleed to death
Mother Moon is like me, she knows when to say
Correctional Facility
Mother Moon over the parking lot
diving into the potholes
on the highway
Mother Moon is bringing in the harvest
you know she grows cocaine?
Mother Moon she’s bad sometimes
she’s big, she
turns the tide in every
double x chromosome
blood is only one part
we are way past
what they say defines us
we renew
Mother Moon rides high
we too
we change
This poem appeared in Drive by Hettie Jones, Hanging Loose Press (1998).