Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Postcards from Inside the Machine” from Bradley Peters’s collection Sonnets from a Cell, shortlisted for the League’s Raymond Souster Award.

---

Postcards from Inside the Machine

By Bradley Peters

peckerwoods

In cuffs, willing myself clean

one pulsating streetlight

at a time while the cop swims

around me with his flashlight

cutting the fog and his face

appears pale and glistening

from the red and blue glare

like something being born.

What are you doing here?

he says and pats me down,

sighs, backsteps, blinds me.

A perfectly nice kid like you.

I’m a straight Caucasian male.

I’m White. I could be his son.

preach

I step into my cell ready to kill

or be killed. Officer, I too love.

Power. Respect. I share your

sense for danger. A Black man

shadowboxes in the corner

of his mind next to bibles

caught between the valley

of the shadow of death

and sizing up his new bunky.

Shirt tucked. Sleeves rolled.

Officer, I too fear the unknown.

He glances up. You religious, man?

I shrug. Well, that’s something

to work on, he says and smiles.

fish

We all watch the dead man

walk across the unit and smile

at each table with his meal tray

like it’s the first day of school.

The dead man looks lost.

He can’t be more than eighteen.

The dead man sports bangles

and a bright red turban to match

the jumpsuit draped on his frame

like PJs. The dead man’s dead

he just doesn’t know it yet.

He grins, clears his throat, nods

at the shot callers. I reach out

to him and touch nothing but air.

torpedoes

The Hills Have Eyes enters my cell.

Me: You can’t be in my room.

Hills: There’s a Hindu on the unit.

Me: Wait. Don’t come any closer.

Hills: The back table wants him gone.

Me: I said stop. Back up, man.

Hills: And you’re going to bounce him.

Me: No. I’m not. Get someone else.

Hills: I said you’re going to bounce him.

Me: I’m just trying to do my time.

Hills: Or I’m going to bounce

your head off this toilet.

Me: Get the fuck out of here!

The Hills Have Eyes exits my cell.

dinner and a show

Meanwhile in Canada an inmate

with a Hitler stache raises red fists

and shouts I’m the king of the world

from the second tier like it’s a pulpit.

Meanwhile in Canada a Sto:lo kid

returns from eighty days in the box

wrists gnarled with paint chips

and tears all the bibles in half.

Meanwhile in Canada my bunky, Preach,

plays aces as a sock lock blooms a pair

of red lips atop his dome and the COs

unload two cans of mace on everyone.

I fall off my chair, shield myself, and later

I stand and return to my cell unscathed.

sock lock

I sense with the knife edge of my eye

bodies shift in the chow hall, looks,

nods, and the white arc of the sock

appears like a scythe of tilting light

above your head. Forgive me, Preach.

I’m not all I hoped I was. That night

we blazed into the toilet’s vacuum

and promised backup, we both knew

it was you who had to fight to survive.

You laugh across the table. I sit frozen

in the moment between grin and lock

and think maybe it won’t come down,

maybe you’re safe, Preach—maybe

it will just suspend above you forever.

taking flight

At lights out I climb metal steps

to go fight The Hills Have Eyes.

His cell is third-last down the tier.

My shirt is tucked, my laces cinched.

I’m resolved and ready for whatever.

The CO shouts ten! The lights dim.

I’m not trying to be some white hero.

Open doorways to my left radiate

Indigo and TV babble and Inmates

shift in the half-light. Two OG’s

cross the unit, nod and smile up

like, go on then, Blondie. I’m trying

to learn my place in all this. I close

my eyes for a bit­­—then enter his room.

---

Bradley Peters grew up in the Fraser Valley, graduated from UBC’s Creative Writing Program, and has since been shortlisted or named runner-up for several awards. Bradley won the Short Grain Contest, and his poems have recently appeared in Arc, Geist, Grain, SubTerrain, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. Bradley’s debut poetry collection, Sonnets from a Cell, is published with Brick Books. Since its release, Sonnets from a Cell was listed as one of CBC’s Best Books of the Year, and Bradley has been a featured guest on Radio Q with Tom Power. The poems in Bradley Peters’ debut collection mix inmate speech, prison psychology, skateboard slang, and contemporary lyricism in a way that is tough and tender, and that critiques the structures that sentence so many to lose.

---

Subscribe to Poetry Pause, or support Poetry Pause with a donation today!

---