Lemon Andersen Reads “Prison Moon” by Jorge Antonio Renaud
Lemon Andersen reads Jorge Antonio Renaud's “Prison Moon,” first prize winner for poetry in PEN's 2005 Prison Writing Contest, at the 2009 event Breakout: Voices from Inside. Read the poem below.
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Prison Moon
Four a.m. work duty and I begin
my solitary trudge from outer compound
to main building. A shivering guard,
chilled in his lonely outpost, strip searches
me until content that my inconsequential nudity
poses no threat and then whispers
the secret code that allows me admittance
into the open quarter-mile walkway.
I chuff my way into another day
as ice glints on the razor wire
and the rifles note my numbed passage,
silent but for my huffs and scuffle
on the cracked, slippery sidewalk
A new moon, veiled in wispy fog
and beringed in glory, hangs over the prison,
its gaudy glow taunting the halogen spotlights.
The moon’s creamy pull upsets
some liquid equilibrium within me
and like tides, wolves and all manner
of madmen, I surrender disturbed by … certainty … under
Listen to audio of the reading