When fighting, protect yourself w/library books

At NPR, Jimmy Santiago Baca tells of how he got into a prison-yard fight once when he was a young man, jailed on a drug conviction.  To protect himself, he strapped library books to his body.

The guy he was fighting connected on a few swipes, he says, but each time, the books — and one big one, in particular — took the blow.

“Had the book not been there, I would have been dead; it would’ve cut all the way to the tailbone. When i went back to my cell, I looked at this one book where he had gouged it about an inch deep. And it was a thick anthology of Romantic poets.”

William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley — “I thought, ‘Wow, you guys saved my life!’ “

Read: Poetry Behind Bars: The Lines That Save Lives — Sometimes Literally– Colin Dwyer-April 30, 2016

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Cloudy Day

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BY JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA

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It is windy today. A wall of wind crashes against,

windows clunk against, iron frames

as wind swings past broken glass

and seethes, like a frightened cat

in empty spaces of the cellblock.

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In the exercise yard

we sat huddled in our prison jackets,

on our haunches against the fence,

and the wind carried our words

over the fences,

while the vigilant guard on the tower

held his cap at the sudden gust.

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Read rest of poem at the Poetry Foundation

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