Welcome, convict, to the silence
on this strongest, concrete island
in the endless sea of din.
No doubt you know the prison law
prohibits conversation, even pinched
and tame as this. No doubt you saw
the penalties as you came in:
the talkers’ broken jaws, their awful eyes,
the welts. That’s why you wince
at every syllable I send.
Don’t turn around, friend.
I’m not there. Nor should you worry.
My lips never move
and what I whisper is concealed
where only you can apprehend it,
tucked like contraband
beneath your collar where it dips
along your chin. I’m two doors down
one floor above you on the left
and I’m pressed close against your skin,
having bounced these sounds
off cement blocks, off steel
to slide them thin and pillow soft
into your cell, so in the seamless quiet
I can tell you what will make you well
and halfway free again.
Keep your teeth still. Let your sighs
steam out. Crushed like each of us
before you under countless pounds
of sere white hush, you’ll want to yell.
That isn’t wise. You’ll want to curse
the guards and God till someone’s forced
to dialogue. That won’t work here,
but there is something better.
I can tie a guilty whisper
to a nightstick till patrol
thinks it’s a conscience on his belt,
and I can sing so nimbly
we’ll confuse the melody with rain,
our own mind’s stealth, my lyrics
with the plash and pause of plasma
through our veins.
Friend, I can shave a whistle into shiv
or make your bride’s pet name
a noose, and if you listen
I will pick the lock around your throat
and set your pink lungs loose
to scream or pray, to boast or praise,
to laugh, exhort, seduce
in language imperceptible
to all except the ear you’ve aimed it to.
Tonight however, each primed eye
is trained on you
and waiting for your lips to part,
for those wrong notes
to happen past, and if they do,
the guards will smile,
and the mere thought of words
will hurt before they’re through.
Enough of that now. You can breathe.
Send me your name, but do not say it.
For a while let’s trust
the wind against your tongue.
Tonight, just blow a frame
around your slowest vowel. Wet your lips
the slightest bit and let a soundless
shape go weird and ultralight and sheer,
an empty echo, ghost of that first cry
the brightness wrung out of your infant larynx
long ago. Your fears aren’t wrong,
but I’m right here.
Taste the air and I will know.
George David Clark is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College. His first book, Reveille (University of Arkansas Press, 2015), won the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, and his more recent poems can be found in AGNI, The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Image, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. The editor of 32 Poems, he lives with his wife and their four young children in Washington, Pennsylvania.
