Posing for an Art Class at a Prison
When I was otherwise out of work,
I’d take off my clothes and strike poses
for art students, letting my mind wander
to favorite songs or poems or autumn walks,
or wintry Manhattan Beach, waves hitting
the rocks hard as gauntleted fists.
This job: a community college rented space
in a prison on the empty, forested border
between Queens and Nassau County,
the studio in a building for the criminally insane.
I won’t lie and say I walked as blithefully
into that hell as I would’ve through the doors
of the old Fillmore East when the Dead
or the Airplane were playing. Still, no howls,
no cells exploding with homicidal madmen
flinging themselves about the bars
as if evil Jungle Jim’s: just hospital-antiseptic
green walls, a guard at the barbed-wired entrance
checking my driver’s license and name
on the visitors’ list, to allow me inside.
What I remember? Changing behind a screen,
then twenty-second poses, so the students
could limber up their wrists, then a series
of one, two, five-minute poses, then finishing
with one that lasted an hour, with breaks
to rest aching limbs holding still for too long.
When the session ended, I collected my check,
and all but skipped the mile or so to the bus stop,
sun Eden-bright, autumn leaves dancing,
a fox disappearing into the quiet woods.