WORD WARRIORS

BY TRACY SCHLAPP & DANNY WILSON

Poetry is the most versatile writing form we use in PonyXpress workshops. A poem can be passed along on a single sheet of paper, carried in a pocket, and yet open an entire world. We love all of the writing that we brought in this year (poetry, essays, and memoir) … the writers sparked conversations and inspired our folks to puzzle out new ways of putting their own words together.

Together with the Snake River Correctional Institution writers, we wrote this poem starting with Mary Oliver’s With the Blackest of Inks as our prompt from the collection, Devotions, published in 2017.

With the blackest of inks
I scribe upon granite clifftops.
You can see lines, shades, a picture becomes reality.
I will let my story be known.
The octopus flows from its enemies.
I wrote a line that didn’t stink.
With the blackest of inks,
there are the brightest of colors.
It was written, not to be forgotten, or erased, or covered,
But to be what it is — true for eternity.
I say farewell.
Identity has sprung.
I leave you a record of our time.
She wrings the sorrow from her hair,
with the blackest of inks.

We travelled to Santa Fe in June to speak at the Museum of International Folk Art about the PonyXpress. After our talk, we were joined on stage with Santa Fe Poet Laureate, Tommy Archuleta to have a conversation about working with folks inside prisons. We brought home his 2023 collection Susto to share with our writers. We also visited Penitentiary of New Mexico to run a few writing workshops in both the minimum facility and the supermax. We didn’t bring in the entire volume of EE Cummings Complete Poems 1904-1962 , instead we read the exquisite [i carry your heart with me (I carry it in] and created a collaborative poem with the folks in minimum and medium.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
i carry it flawlessly, perfectly in my sleeve,
a fashion, one can’t imagine.

i carry it in my bottle full of tears.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in vain]
to the loved one I have left behind,
i pray for your peace.

and when I don’t believe
i carry your heart with me(i carry in]

i carry your heart with me(it is so dear]
my thoughts, my mind keeps your love with me

(i carry it in the memory-bank] reminisce of times we spent
i carry it in my thoughts, dreams, prayers(you are part of me)

I hope you know my heart is also with you
despite the sadness — brokenness within me
I’ll always hold on with a firm grip.

I carry your heart within me and there it will forever be
I hope you carry mine to the end.

I carry your heart with me, I carry in(my soul, my sea, God it is thee]
and like my own, i wear your heart on my sleeve.

Ada Limon, the former US Poet Laureate presented her last public reading at Nestucca K-8 School in Cloverdale, Oregon. We purchased her books for the PonyXpress library at Oregon State Penitentiary and she inscribed them for the editorial team. Recently, we published writing that took inspiration from her poem “Where the Circles Overlap” from her 2022 book The Hurting Kind. As we drive out along the Columbia on our way to Pendleton, I think of her words: We think time is always time. And place is always place. We published Still the Wind in December to feature some of the writing inspired by the poem.

MORE PEOPLE WE MET ON THE PAGE
Girl Warrior by Joy Harjo, 2025
Weaving Sundown in a Scarlett Light by Joy Harjo, 2023
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case, 2025
Thunder Song by Sasha taqwseblu LaPointe, 2024
We Survived the Night by Julian Brave Noisecat, 2025
The Solace of Open Space by Gretel Ehrlich, 1985
A Primer for Forgetting by Lewis Hyde, 2019