LONGING

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

Longing, the absence of love, can be measured in time, distance: my person is a six-hour drive away; my mother died in 2018; I went to prison when my kid was one, she just graduated from high school. The hollow is palpable in the body, triggering stress hormones that can lead to depression. The entire globe was drenched in deep longing during the pandemic. We live with a desire to have things return to before the disruption, and the slow steady drip of realization — the time before has passed — those opportunities are gone. The catastrophic effect of that sudden, and powerful detachment from the world of touch and sharing of space, of seeing one another’s faces has impacted us all in ways we are only starting to recognize. The sheer disappointment of loss clings to us, seeding discontent. The divisiveness, irritability we see in American politics may be one of those aftershocks. Aside from handwashing, how has your life changed?

Our writers are expert at living within absence. Each person comes to prison with a story too complex to generalize, and yet, they all experience immediate and extreme detachment from their lives. I can only start to imagine those first few hours, days, months, years of adjustment. Stressla Lynn Johnson brought his journals to workshop this week to share some of the writing that he says brought him back to life after spending three and year years on death row. The books are thick, filled with his distinct writing. Tiny circles hang over each lowercase i.  As I look at the page, I think how drawing those circles must slow down his writing pace, creating a different rhythm, more like meditation than flourish. Love: The Bulletin Board of the Universe was constructed in two parts. The first part written from a workshop prompt to select and define a Greek term for love. Writing the first section of the poem drew him back into the pages of those early journals to find the conclusion in a March 2006 entry. A circle was closed.

Alongside Stressla, kosal so and Le’Var Howard delivered these pieces on Wednesday in our OSP workshop. The two writers read poems on the yard when the weather is fine, so I like the idea of releasing the work together. For More a Soul in Eros, a hymn to the god, Le’Var calls for a campaign — as if this absence of love is a war raging within. He beseeches Eros to fill those hollow spaces with love, honest and true:
EROS, the Passionate, the Pure, The Red, Ruby Red.
Peddles shed light to all Losssss…It corners
and hollows hearts. The wake. At the
wake those same hearts, once
hollow, will beat!

The treetops, empty of leaves, set into motion kosal so’s blue sky longing. He looks out from the fifth floor window of the Chapel and contemplates the negative space of loss migrating through the seasons. This longing is measured by heartbeats as it circulates through his body:
i dislike my creative mind
that constantly searches
for sorrow.

The creative mind refuses to stop, it draws wider and wider connection points to understanding in order to build a case. It seems for kosal so the positive and negative space (the joy/pain of love) rightfully exist together.

When the creative mind is held in stasis, it loops tightly on itself; one point to the next and back again. From Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton, Amir’Whadi writes The Love is There, Still, a poem that circles points of hurt from one heart to the other. The desire to remain tightly bound to love, to one’s most basic need resonates here. The word still jumps out to my ear. It is a stubborn assertion.

I think of how difficult it is to find stillness in prison. During our workshop, the men talk about how it is never quiet inside. There is constant movement, an agitated energy filling the space. I’ve read that empty space is the privilege of wealth. Imagine a beautifully curated gallery with a solitary work of art and a simple bench or that bench placed in the landscape with an unobstructed view. I think of the privilege of a private backyard during Covid for visiting friends and family.

An empty page is wealth in prison. It is still. | TDS