RAP

They let him cool his heels for a while
in an isolated cell while they got their
stuff together. They needed him to get
his stuff together too: get all nervous
and tongue tied while he waited for
them to march in with their charges,
whatever they were.
It worked, played on his nerves, sitting
there in a cage trapped like an animal.
“Hey, how about my phone call!”
He shouted.
No one answered.
“How about my lawyer!”
Not that he had or could afford one.
“You ain’t been charged with nothin’ yet.”
A gruff voice grunted around the corner.
“Then why am I here? Show your face!
Where’s my habeas corpus!”
“Don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that and
couldn’t care less. All I know is I’m
trying to read the paper and you’re
disturbing my peace!”
The next morning he learned. There
was an attempted break-in at some home
near where he was walking – a big man
in a hooded parka. The family dog scared
him off. The owner was pretty sure he
saw a black man running from the house.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with that!”
My cellmate keeps shouting and giving
me a migraine. “Before I know it I’m in
a lineup. Some guy says that’s him and
here I am!”
All blacks look alike to folks around here,
I’ll admit. And all crooks look black when
their wearing hoods and all you can see is
their back. Lester looks kind of scary
anyway, although he’s not. Hey, I believe
him! I just wish he’s quit his screaming.

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Lifer

Like the death moan of a hopeless Brontosaurus,
choking on fog and sinking into prehistoric darkness,
the noon whistle blows its agonized drone over the
docks, lines, mills, bins, tech shops, foundries, smoke-
smothered labyrinths.
Legions of laborers, dressed in blue, green, gray work
drabs, pour out of the industrial buildings from every
direction. The mass march maneuvers through the maze
in a sun dazzled lockstep, swelling, mingling, massing,
merging, doggedly shuffling, until they dead-end at the
cafeteria’s jam-packed entrance.
Everyday, I imagine that I’m in a Hollywood penal flick –
“The House Of Numbers,” or “Alcatraz,” or on cold rainy
days Fritz Lang’s spooky, silent movie “Metropolis.”
It didn’t feel that way before they cut our pay, pensions,
health care, vacation days. These days you’re lucky to just
have a job, sad to say. Maybe we’re all just serving out
sentences here, anyway. Sure feels that way.

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Rex Sexton grew up in Chicago. He studied painting and writing on the G. I. Bill in Boston. His award winning art has been exhibited in museums, televised on PBS, written about in newspapers, reproduced in magazines and included in national and international exhibitions. His short story “Holy Night” received an Eric Hoffer award and was published in Best New Writing 2007. His poetry and prose have appeared in cutting-edge literary magazines and his recent poetry collection “The Time Hotel” was described by a Kirkus review as “… a deeply thought-provoking … compelling reading experience.”