Region 5 – Sierra

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Henry Robinett

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Cherie Hacker

 

 Stacy Hay

Lara Gularte

WHAT THE TIDE BRINGS IN

The tide comes in like my white bearded ancestors. Waves strike me down, hissing salt water, and I hear my dead grandmother calling. The muscle of tide holds me, then drags me to shore over rocks and shells. I lie here, bruised from the struggles in my life, and years away from my grandmother’s tender reach. Myself freed, lifted whole from the sea, washed up to lie on rocks, to watch the turning back of tides and their return.

I rise to see a creature tangled in fish net, flippers, fin-thin, flailing, dragging on the beach toward me. I turn the creature on its back, its yellow-green underbelly wet and soft, its flippers drooping over the edge of its shell. It lies still as I untangle it. Once freed from the netting, I flip it back over. Right side up again the reptile stares at me with its prehistoric eyes. Revived, it makes a dash toward the sea where it evolved from egg to lizard. Hard shell afloat it skims the surface beaked head darting, its torso rocking against the rhythm of the current. The brine sloshes against rocks as the creature turns, dives, presses its body farther into the sea, hauled by the tides, to come into, out of, and finally under.

BONE HUNTING IN THE SIERRA

High on an open ridge,
I look out over mountains and valleys,
hunger for the history of the deep underground,
the marrow of what came before.

The rage of a mountain wind,
and a moment of unearthliness,
yet I am earth filled,
as I search for bones and fossils.

Shadows shift, and a Great Gray–
floats without moving a wing,
perches on my spine.

I trace tracks in sandstone
with my fingertips,
find missing vertebrae and skull,
feel kinship with a broken pelvis.

Rocks unfold themselves into arms and legs.
I try to push the root-limbs
back inside the hard mountain
toward the deepness, the origin of all things.

Scream of hawk above,
I hear the slow grind of bedrock,
feel a deep down ache,
as pieces of myself fall away.

Kathleen Malloy

If I Had It To Do All Over Again
     The handcuffed, shackled inmate shuffles by me – head down. Escorted, he has a correctional officer on either side. Maybe he’s considering what happened to create this consequence….maybe he’s not.
I work in a men’s prison teaching convicts (soon to be living in a neighborhood near you) to see how their thinking is inextricably linked with their behavior and consequences.
In many cases do-overs or shoulda-coulda-woulda- thinking is a waste of time. We cannot change the past. But if we don’t learn from the past….well that’s insane. I see this pattern time and again in prison. Men who believe they have no choice in their actions. Men whose internalized rage and hopelessness control their lives. Many of them are incarcerated because they ‘re-do’ the same thing over and over again. They are tried, convicted and flung together in dorms and cells, left to their own devices…left to teach one another the only things they know. It’s a fast track Phd in Anti-Social Behaviors.
Some people believe that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. They believe that it is a waste of money to have programs in the prisons. At almost every family gathering one of my brothers questions my job, and the fact that so much money is wasted on the inmates in our prison system. He believes, like many, that prisons should be punitive. I choose to use my time helping these men look at their thoughts and how they can make better choices in the future.
All we know is all we’ve been taught. Some of these men see the world through a lens of need and hunger and hopelessness. – They choose what they know, what they’ve grown up with – it’s comfortable for a while- until they come to prison where top ramen is the local currency, they live in a toilet with another man, and their personal belongings can be “tossed” at will. And into this hostile, fracas of community we ask them to sit together in a group of strangers and take a closer look at their lives and re-examine how they think.
Change is hard for most people. Being out of our comfort zones makes many uneasy, even though we also know that change is constant and inevitable. Yet sometimes we all function on autopilot. WE develop a routine way of doing and being. When was the last time you made a major change in your life? Or re-examined a long held belief?

If I Had It To Do All Over Again
I’ve tried to think hard about what I’ve done in my past life, about the choices that I’ve made that have cost me so much.
From the beginning it was a fight. So much was stacked against me. An abusive and alcoholic father, a gang and drug infested neighborhood, peer pressure, bullies, violence. It all existed in my environment. And like everyone else, I accepted it. I kept quiet about the abuse from my father. I joined the gang in my neighborhood, I became a drug dealer and drug user, I fell prey to the peer pressure, I became a bully, and I participated in a lot of violence.

Marshmallow Eaters

Scientists just moved the hands of the Doomsday clock
Closer to midnight
Will the Earth breathe a sigh of relief
to be free of humans?
With our individualistic bravado,
Lone hero, Egotistical ideas
We march across lands
Claiming all as our own.
Where was our ‘AHA’ moment?
Where were we when they sent the memo of Understanding
Explaining Our Divine Interconnectness?
Our foresight is not pure,
Our hindsight is not guilt free.
Impulse control be damned.
The Marshmallow Eaters
See no further than their wallets.
Some think their money will save them.
But when the clock strikes midnight
The shattering vibration
will deafen us all.

Raindrops sparkle like diamonds

Raindrops sparkle like diamonds
Atop the Buttercream curlicue
Razor wire.
Tatted and tattered
The men walk the asphalt track
Counter clockwise
Beneath towers and green guards with guns.
Hardened by life experiences,
Twisted by drugs ingested to forget
They get high to remember
The person they are,
When they’re not the person they are.
Outer physiques made taut and strong
With burpees and crunches,
Inwardly inert,
Resistant to the discomfort of vulnerability-
Afraid of exposure.
Their souls were not tended.
Like all living things,
People can be stunted
If they don’t receive
The proper nutrients.