Jason Centrone was awarded an Honorable Mention in Poetry in the 2022 Prison Writing Contest.
Every year, hundreds of imprisoned people from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works to PEN America’s Prison Writing Contest, one of the few outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population.
If you know the look—
the math of light uninterrupted—
(or how it is you describe it—
no need to cram our losses into a
single vacuum)
if you know the glare—light from out
suffusing a freshly emptied room—
nook with a ladder-back chair
slid into its table for good,
I’m sorry, and I’m sorry
now that empty means no one
or one
no longer sorting
fast at the room’s undressed window
gradually, a thousand pieces
into molecular strands
of the big picture—oh,
this sort of empty, I am sorry
now that the space isn’t vacant,
only feels as much
(or little) and there is this
look of the light which
by its luminous flux
banking
unrestricted off all
interior planes—
like an uncle
shaved his
forty year moustache—by this
unusually glib incandescence,
I am reminded
(or couldn’t we both
- be) how one person
(rest one person’s soul) has backed
altogether
out of the kingdom—
Trojan Horse, but
in reverse and bellied with
a tired,
a most laconic soldiery—
it’s radiant days that
you and I, we’re
beaten by the look—this stabbing
brightness in its place.
Purchase Variations on an Undisclosed Location: 2022 Prison Writing Awards Anthology here.
