GO HOME BOY GO HOME
It’s in the story of an inmate whose dog
shows up at the prison and lies at the double
line of fences. Whenever a rabble
of prisoners struts out to the yard for rec,
the sad, lumpy mutt rises, drags its body
along the chain-link, stroked by the braids
of tempered metal, and for one hour a day
he and his master stare at each other
through sixteen feet of Concertina, fanged
helixes stacked like hay bales. “Go home, boy.
Go home. Who did this? Was it Sheila? She left
you here?” The dog stays for weeks. A guard
admits to leaving it peanuts and pork rinds.
Then on a morning the inmate wakes feeling
fluish and almost skips rec, when he
goes outside anyways, his dog is gone.
Down the gravel access road toward the pines
where the state highway heads north or south, the way
is blurred, like heat, like dust. “He finally obeyed,”
the inmate says to himself, though the absence
catches him like another sentence. He kneels by the fence,
the hinge of his jaw stiffening, something dense
but spectral rising into his throat and after
wiping a wrist across his cracked bottom lip lets out
a long howl. It lifts but falters
as he fixes his hashed gaze all the way
to where he imagines his call dissolves.
None of the inmates on the yard look, they don’t
laugh or blast from their wellsprings of derision.
All seem to have lowered their heads
as if searching for something delicate
dropped near their institution boots.
—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
__________
Erik Tschekunow: “As is evident in the subject matter of this, I spent five years in a federal prison for an addiction-fueled offense. More than anything else, poetry helped get me through my bid.”
