A Scared Fag in Jail

I mean prison. I enter the cell

and a fist flies through the dark

and slices wide my lip. I look as my

kiss streams from the wound:

            a fight to the death, if

            this isn’t about sex: about who’s trapped

            and smashed into like a crowbar inside a clay bust.

Moments like these I think, after

this, I pick a picture

my sister mailed me.

This one has the big stuffed Pokemon.

                                    I too had a big stuffed Pokemon

                                    on bed, and was an honors student.

                                    U.C. Berkeley is fun if you’re gay.

                                    On campus hate is theory.

                                                Curious freak thing­­—

                                    ornate alien theme like a thumbprint on Europe.

I’m male; I use my kiss on men.

What’s expected of me: write a thesis

in a few languages, and slice wide the prompt:

            Aren’t Gays in America privileged?

            The thwack of a jack-in-the-box

            sticking out a smile, bloodless.

Back into the cell, now taste of blood blooms. Imagining

a thesis where fists tear it into little pieces.

Indignity infinite.

I know it’s a photograph. I see my

sister lives well. Her big stuffed Pokemon

on bed where there’s maps (the travel bot saucer-shaped);

but my prison bunk: nothing’s there

except blood and time.

To undo the picture’s magic. I do

cast spells in words spelled.

Far away trains pass.

Why not? Not a single

car to interrupt the first line…

‘Hate’ is a mouse of a monosyllable: 4 letters breathed

by 1 syllable. Linguists

found the young learn this word about the time

they add ‘love’ and ‘fear’ to their vocabulary.

Deep and ingrained, the wheels and cogs

that make the heart tick.

I worry that if I

            write too far, I’ll go soft and set

            my body on a path to unpredictable pleasures.

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Akiva Israel, poet, is doing time in a California Prison for men. Before prison, he was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and took multiple degrees. Later in law school, he sought to impact California’s criminal justice system. Due to his mental health and his deficiency in cash, he failed. But, as of 2024, he learns law in America’s most violent and racially diversified school of law: a bunk in an American prison.