TRANSFERRED

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

We shake a lot of hands in prison, it is a hybrid version of the greeting that includes a hand on the shoulder — an almost hug. Breaking it down, it’s how we signal trust and partnership and warmth. We are genuinely happy to see the folks who return time and time again to workshops and to our performances. And we are just as excited to meet new people. This is the culturally agreed upon appropriate greeting — and everything we do is built with maintaining respectful boundaries. The writers have talked about missing touch. Family visits have restrictions, due to security concerns. Touch from a loved one releases stress. I can link to any number of studies but all you need to do is tap into your personal experience and you know this to be true. This group of pieces add to our faceted understanding of love. Here, we start to see how it manifests itself in the misty morning, the memory of the warm baby head smell, and the dark of the night.

Melissa Haley’s “Wonder Love” starts with a recap of the Greek love words that prompted this issue as if the very listing can conjure love. She draws down the words to the person in her mind. The tone is like the mist in her poem. This is how love stays alive. If the morning provides illumination for Melissa Haley, night time leaves R. Miranda to meditate on love. In “Awake” he writes, “I long to write a ‘love’ song./ A lullaby to sing to my soul” and in the darkness these ideas ferment.

Carolyn Stickley (affectionately known as Grannie) conjures the smell of a baby’s head in her piece “Love is a Miracle.” In her expansive way, Carolyn opens a portal and love passes through the generations. The mother loves the child, loves the child’s child, unconditionally. She writes, “Love allows us to roam the vistas of the mind.” Like Carolyn, Jimmy Kashi writes of the love he receives from his family and that he offers to his daughter. Love and forgiveness are woven tightly in the contract of Jimmy’s expression of love.

I hold in my hands, stacks of writing on strips of paper in blue ink. They are writings that folks in the SHU (solitary housing unit) wrote to lift their spirits and that of their fellows. These are the love letters that defy touch. In one, Little Boy writes to CL:

“I have never been good at speaking my gratitude homie but this poem really hit home & had me wanting to write somethings down that go through my head. I know we all go through our battles in times like these. And I thank you homie from the bottom of my heart for your poem — really helped me dig deep in my thoughts and write them down. It really brought my spirits up …”

The hand touches the pen, the ink touches paper, and feelings are transferred through the action. | TDS