In Memory of Herman Wallace, One of the Angola 3
I’m often asked what did I come to prison for; and now that I think about it…., It doesn’t matter what I came here for, what matters now is what I leave with. And I can assure you, however I leave, I won’t leave nothing behind.
-Herman Wallace
A man’s history in three paces
from toilet to cell door: the lie
that kept him locked away for
4 decades, 23 hours at a time
in the hole, a near empty box
Retaliation for speaking out, for
shaping black bones and sinew
into a prowl of panthers against
inhumanity torture and slavery
Yassuh Angola, where officers
called Freemen work where best
behaved black prisoners known
as Houseboys wash guards’ cars
clean their houses water flowers
Where a prison warden ignored
the overturned convictions, kept
Herman Wallace in solitary
feared blacks chasing after him
for his “radical” humane ideas
Not seen for 40 years by inmates
illnesses ignored ’til gravely ill
a judge released him liver cancer
claimed his life three days later
I’m free he said I’m free, I’m free
Estranged Fruit
Forced birth to increase
domestic supply of infants
for adoption. Not oil, not
chickens– children.
Is birth control next
to be sacrificed on the altar
of false piety– our bodies
offered up to the state?
Anger–too small a word to
contain my feelings of betrayal,
despair at the sufferings, deaths
to come, at memories triggered:
Of being told to steal a diaphragm off
the doctor’s desk because he couldn’t
prescribe contraceptives in sixties’
Boston even to a married woman.
Of being molested by a Harley Street
physician as I lay on the table awaiting
an abortion, of being told he was doing
sex research as I must be a loose woman.
After years of struggle, lost and damaged
lives, are we once again commodities
to be exploited, trees forced to bear fruit,
to be plucked and plundered, driven
underground to early and unmarked graves?
About the author: I was deeply involved in the antiwar and civil rights movements of the sixties both in London and the United States and was a young adult pre-Roe v. Wade. I am still deeply committed to social justice.