Prison strips people’s identity down to a dehumanizing series of digits. A prisoner takes exception. A poem By Lester L. Polk.
I may be known as a number
H72800
An unknown entity
to those charged with cataloguing and warehousing me
but actually I am a creative, sentient being.
To some, I am the seventy-second thousand, eight hundredth person to fall
into the trench of the hotel series of lost causes.
H72800
But I am a source of volcanic vision, wanted and unwanted.
I am the strength of a geyser, the force of a hurricane.
I am the truth that will not die
no matter how many attempts are made on its life.
I am freedom.