Sandbagging

Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, 1997
To highway-road,
to rock-build.
To tree-split,
fence-string,
hammer.
Prisoner porter,
prisoner freight.
To hammer,
to hammer.
You hold bags open,
you funnel
the sand.
You tie them
closed and load
here,
to the truckbed.
Prisoner faithful,
prison of storms.
To harbor
and winnow,
to salvage.
Your mothers
unmothered,
you bolster.
The warden says fill
and you fill it.
The river says
break
and you still it.

Rachel Richardson
“Sandbagging” is from Copperhead (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011), Southern Cultures, spring 2010 (vol 16 no 1).