FINDING GRACE IN A PRISON YARD
BY TRACY SCHLAPP
It is June 30, 2018 and I sit alone in a prison yard watching our band Luther’s Boots play for a group of 750 people at Oregon State Penitentiary. The show was a fundraiser for constructing the prison’s Japanese Healing Garden. That day, I felt small and illiterate as I sat on that brittle grass alone. I was acutely aware of the crowd of giant men on all sides of me as they hollered and cheered for the band. I say illiterate because I didn’t know how to read this sea of faces held in place by years of masculine training and their arms, necks, legs, chests covered in tattoos I couldn’t decipher. The men in the bleachers were strangers who had lived very different lives. Where could we possibly find common ground?
That day, I squared my shoulders, shook hands, and said hello to as many men as I could. And in return, I was welcomed with hospitality, gentleness, and the kind of grace that radically changed the trajectory of my life. Now when I scan the crowd, I recognize faces, and the men I have come to know. Tonight, we will celebrate the college graduation of Kyle Hedquist, who we met that day. In 2018, Kyle was president of the Lifer’s Club and was serving life without parole. Within six months of meeting he had paved the way for our first writing program at OSP. It was Kyle who hand-selected writers to contribute to the project we made together and completed during Covid, the anthology Prisons Have A Long Memory — for which he wrote the title essay. Governor Kate Brown granted Kyle clemency and on April 15, 2022, Danny and I were honored to be among the many supporters to greet him as he crossed that prison wall. Since his release, Kyle has married, taken up advocacy work with the legislature on the behalf of his brothers and sisters still behind the walls, and of course, finished his degree. Congratulations Kyle we are so proud to know you. From his piece Life Prevails which was printed in the anthology:
While separated from the ones I love, I can still see beauty all around me. Even the menacing high concrete walls are no match for Mother Nature. Moss turns golden brown along its top and droops down the walls like worn curtains. Rain falls and makes patterns like mountainscapes. Every crack in the wall hides leaves and petals from windblown fields. The moss lying in the crevices smells of the forest I once ran through as a child. I secretly pick blackberries growing in a long-abandoned hitching post from centuries past. Life prevails all around me and new beginnings welcome me, call me, to find them on the Big Yard of OSP.
Among his many attributes, Kyle is an excellent judge of character. He introduced us to many of our most successful workshop contributors, including R. Miranda who has been writing with us since day one. R. Miranda is one of those giant men who joined as a stranger with an accordion file filled with his work and soon became a valuable elder voice in our group. As part of our summer special issue, we decided to spotlight this man who has served 33 years of a life without parole sentence. Born in San Jose, California, R. Miranda sites his roots that combine Mayan, Apache, Yaqui ancestry with Spanish/Romanian heritage. In his tale The Prince and The Princess he imagines the connections that brought his people to these shores. His short memoir A Defining Moment provides context for where his education began, and Portrait of a Native Chief continues that story. We follow with a new selection of poems, along with previously published work to provide you an opportunity to get to know something of this man. | TDS
Unarranged Words
You Will Never Know
Into the Light (Defiance of Silence)
Awake
The Harvest Moon
When Love