Cold Virgins			(A Sad Song) 
The boy who kept crimes as pets, 
3 melodious girls dipping teaspoons into sugar---
Their disturbance is present in every part of the action. 
Every day I wait for their return. 
It's not even disappointing, 
The crush of my whole life. 

Today on the bus a man leaned into me,
Babbling entrails of description:
His life of crime, always in tatters, was hard work.
The ax in his bag was pushed against my leg.
Another woman pressed hysteria to her face,
2 warm circles of skin.
Then a man stood up and apologized, "for all men."

Expectation spreads the rug, paranoia butters it.
All strung & played with severe handicaps,
pancake girl shoots up in the echo chamber. 
I get by on loyalty,
Transportation into the ether of my own tones. 
...restless to put my fist inside that pit stop. 

Dear prisoners, who have lived a little, 
My hips are solid as my stew pot.
It's the creativity of emptiness (again). 
Leadership creates a vacuum filled by followers:
Blue vaults of the sky. 
We must be continuous now,
having just come out of the vault.


(For the inmate poetry class at Duell Vocational Institution, a level 3 California prison)

camille roy