Thank you to the editors at Claudius Speaks Journal for including my poem, “Imprisoned,” in their themed issue (IV), Flight! You can read this poem in full as it appears in my forthcoming chapbook, THIS BEING DONE (Finishing Line Press), below:

Imprisoned

Now is not the time
for my fettered    titanium lines—

no time for me to claim
I know a thing or two about life
as if I were anyone’s keeper…

A “suicidally depressed” convict doing life for murder
petitioned my psychotherapist friend to treat him:

& so it was that with all the detached generosity
a wife & mother of three could muster     she rendered
a diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder
even as his icy eyes ignited in her a germ of lust
that razed every trace of her in a sudden flush

Now is really not the time for idle moralizing
about prisoners     or locks…