Angola (Louisiana) FOR ERNEST GAINES By Michael S. Harper

Three-fourths Mississippi

River, one-fourth rattlesnakes,

and for company, razorwire

fences, experiments from South

Africa, aging behind bars,

all in their seventies,

with no parole; perhaps

2500 natural life sentences,

30-year lifers behind bars.

Still, the roads have flowers;

and in the prison hospital

the Lifers Association creed

is in full bloom, technical

supernovas of the TV world:

you avoid mirrors as you can’t

avoid hard labor, false teeth,

high blood pressure, rape:

all this in the prison magazine.

Wheelchair has transcended mirrors;

he dreams about theft and harassment

as a prison underwater,

decompression channels of the bends,

cheap guards in scuba tanks,

for he is never coming up;

it is “too exotic,” he says,

and you hunger for the fields

you were broken in;

you hunger for your white neighbors,

dragon deputies, the KKK,

as you count the gray hairs

on the sideview of your mustache.

After three heart attacks

you can stand gospel music,

sports, violence, drugs,

for deathrow education

is bimonthly books,

the old folks’ home on this shuttle.

I was born on False River:

tell my story in amplitude

from one slavery to another;

give me the pure medicine

for rape, murder, the nectar

in balm for the barroom fight:

teach me to read, and write.

From “The Vintage Book of African American Poetry,” edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton (Vintage Books: 398 pp., $14)