How to Build a Prison (a poem)

By Quincy Scott Jones

 

for Philadelphia, USA

 

1.

Always hated that building and never knew why

The one right before the on-ramp for 95

Cross-corner from the statue of Tamanend

Riding the world-turtle stretching out his hand

 

William Penn got along with Indian

That’s why it’s not Fort Philly

That’s why there’s no wall

But there’s this building

 

Five stories tall all boarded-up

windows and blackened red brick

where Philadelphia starts to unfold

where the City of Brotherly Love sold slaves

 

2.

MOVE: 1 city, 2 stories

They lived like animals.                       .They wore dread locks

They ate garbage.                                . They grew organic fruit

They shot from the bunker.                 .There were no guns in the house

 

Rebroadcast on Chanel 10

The bomb the blaze the heat

That which we all agree

MOVE: one neighborhood, 2 survivors

 

 

3.

Rebroadcast on Chanel 10

Every year the police helicopter

releases the bomb like  New Year’s Day

releases Mummers on Broad Street

 

Follow it like City Hall Scandal

Follow it like Eagles-Cowboys game

Follow it like 4th quarter Hail Mary

going… going… going…

 

 

 

4.

The security guard locks doors like forgotten trauma

I’m in my office late grading papers that analyze poems

that protest against policy

I’m in my office marking in red when students misspell “Sanchez”

 

The security guard stops to remind me

Every Liberal is a Conservative

that hasn’t been mugged yet

He was a cop before I was born

 

back when Philly was a Police Force

Crack a head through a windshield

in order to protect

Light a block on fire to serve

 

 

5.

Order a cheesesteak

in South Philly

Notice the sign

ORDER IN ENGLISH ONLY

 

Notice a T-shirt

for sale HELP

PUT MUMIA SIX FEET

CLOSER TO HELL

 

Go across the street

Notice the sign

OWNER DOES NOT ACCEPT

BILLS COVERED IN BLOOD

 

 

6.

My students ask me if I

will take a haunted tour

of historic Eastern State Penitentiary

I tell them As a Black man

 

I try to never set foot in a prison

I tell them

I live in Philadelphia

I already have bars on my door.

 

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Quincy Scott Jones’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as the African American Review and the Journal of Pan African Studies and such anthologies as Draw to Marvel:  Poems from Comic Books, Heroics: Strange Tales of Absurd Superheroes, From Where We Sit: Black Writers Write Black Youth and Let Loose on the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. With Nina Sharma Jones he co-created the Nor’easter Exchange:  a multicultural, multi-city reading series.   His first book, The T-Bone Series, was published by Whirlwind Press in 2009.