Poem of the Week

That’s a Lot of Sh%@

Demetrius Buckley

written at the Richard A. Handlon prison during the first gust of smog

from Canada’s wildfires

Pillows filled with river pebbles, green mat

steel slate, heat too hot, nose dry, dream

of sandstorms, then warm warnings,

uhh,

TV glares in darkness,

woman CO stares, Friday night TCM, wrestling

matches on TNT, boombox and workout, 100 reps

of 4 sets, maybe 6, uhh, pretzels in clear plastic bowls, white fans

stained in Colombian dried coffee—from damp brown napkins,

yellow chow hall spoons, showerheads and crooked tiles,

too many sandals and shakedowns and caressings and,

uhh,

momma sometimes don’t answer her phone, auntie

just died, homeboy

talking bad behind my back—ears ringing, rerun

romcoms to too many commercial breaks,

uhh, walkies

squawking,

keys jangling every 52 minutes, 90 Day

Fiancé on a homeboy’s cashapp, uhh

pimpin’

ain’t easy,

a CO

says when strip-searching gloveless,

uhh,

momma’s mom prayed for fire and got melted ice caps, long

summers and hurricanes blowing out towns

like birthday candles

ancestors making wishes

Uhh,

dreams and dreams and so many dreams

that through the day it’s a blur, remembering backyards

and open garage sales,

uhh, too much kissing

and a lot of nothing

until she gave it up,

uhh,

depending on hopeless events

ending at the blockbuster parking lot, uhh,

uhh,

morning subscription of a cold sun, fences

bending and bending—wrapping up the earth, a foodloaf

pushed through a seg slot,

uhh,

living in bathrooms, under sink items,

auction block, beefed up,

uhh,

city banks offering somewhere to hold our zeros,

uhh, green fleece,

blue hat in chow line cracking fat jokes, uhh, running

from the phone’s

black receiver, uhh, feeling like

that black receiver—

I’m just here to be talked into, uhh,

a good weekend of half-spit, loud rousing, uhh, potatoes

old as last week’s wedges, uhh, brushing teeth, wiping face

from last night’s empty peace, uhh, huddling on yards,

making music and kicking up prison dust, uhh,

Canada sending heat signals—

this is how they alert the chief before war.

The Yale Review · “That’s a Lot of Sh%@” by Demetrius Buckley

what surprised you about the composition of this poem?

What surprised me were the textual layers that connected the meaning through transitions. For me, it is difficult to change the direction of a topic mid-poem, so the uhhs were a creative formation that I thought would be cool to use. Pillows filled with river pebbles, personal ciphers that the person experiences in the poem. The speaker’s explanation of being in segregation (the hole) for so long that the earth feels manufactured to fit through a small food slot—that’s a crafty way to say that prisoners are people still attached to the world. That, somehow, we are still here.

Demetrius Buckley is the winner of the 2021 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize, and his work has appeared in The Rumpus, PEN America, Scalawag, Tahoma Literary Review, The Offing, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.