New Poetry by William Doreski

Faxing a Message from Prison

Faxing a message from prison,
I have to stand in line for hours.
Guards blot excess adjectives,
words with too many vowels,
and phrases shaped like cigars.
They ridicule love notes to judges,
flattery to sleazy lawyers,
and threats to errant spouses.

My turn. The guards critique
my awkward metaphors and excess
chiasmus, but let it pass.
The machine growls at me. Teeth
gnash as it shreds the page.
A cough from the depth of earth
has digested my message. 
A sigh of boredom suggests
that message has arrived, so what?

The guards hustle me along.
I hope that whoever received
my fax will publish it somewhere,
maybe in a local newspaper
among the hundreds of coupons
and lurid accounts of honeymoons
and obituaries of realtors
everyone secretly despised.

Sentenced to life for living too long,
I’ve faxed this last complaint
in living color. But reproduced
on flimsy paper, all streaked
and blotched, it will testify
with faceless expression anyone
might don like a mask for a laugh.


- William Doreski 2019

William's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (2019).