because when they locked each man alone

in the room with me—nineteen, thin as a child

beside the smallest of them—with his book

and pads of paper and sharpened pencils, only

a tiny window that looked out into the hall

where no guard stood, I could see

the boredom and the shyness on their faces, these men

fresh from prison but still waiting

in one building, in Pioneer Square, in Seattle, in winter,

where every Saturday it rained, a fact

we hardly saw ourselves but heard

in the drumming against the roof’s beams and in the wet

squeak of someone’s soles down the hall

where I would teach them words

they would or would not use; going over

with one man, who was twenty-five but read

as well as a fourth grader, pages of Genesis

so he could learn the terms

firmament and plenitude; his agate eyes

flicking over pages that looked

recently unearthed: phrases to be practiced

at his new job, which was to drive a forklift

for Weyerhaeuser, because it was the Bible

he wanted first, as another man wanted Louis

L’Amour and a third asked for the back issues of Time

someone left in AA on the chairs. And it was

not frightening, no, not even when one man said

he’d made tapes of letters that he would send me, recordings

of his thoughts that spooled in the dark

in the dormitory where he couldn’t sleep, its locked doors

but open windows, the insomniac moon

peering in on the skinny desk clerk who checked him

in or out, who called the CO if he missed

a meeting, learning to move

from bed to work to group to lights out, but not

to outside the building to stand alone

and smoke a cigarette. And what did he feel

those nights, listening to the rain a wall away,

the cars that drove by in the dark, each steered

by someone smoking, singing, driving until morning

came with its cramped room, its yellow book to stutter over:

firmament, the men spelled out, plenitude, gunslinger,

working until the locked door rattled open

and I got up because it was time for me

to leave, the sounds of cafés and movie theaters

welling up behind me. So close,

I told them, when they got a word

less wrong, as if discipline

made a difference, stopping only when one man,

furious, slammed a hand to the table

and began crying. And even then

I wasn’t scared because

I didn’t have to be, listening to the thread

of the sentence he hadn’t finished. Brother,

he’d begun, thee shall rise again,

while the rain spat, unseen, against our building.

Olive Oatman in Texas

OLIVE OATMAN IN TEXAS

Sherman, Texas, 1865

These blue-black lines have faded over time,

feathered into my chin like newsprint

dropped in water. And the dress

I wore for the portraits: my brother

chose its pattern: its rickrack track