Cell block #1:  On a school trip.

 

@ Eastern State Penitentiary, where “incarceration would lead to penitence and reformation.” 

through a peephole

in the thick wooden door

I see a slatted metal bed frame

a lopsided dresser missing

the top drawer

plaster crumbles

into a heap on the floor

the smell of mildew

dust suspended

a lamp dangles

from a twisted wire

the only light

sneaking through a slit

in the ceiling

that hovers so low

Christine Taylor, a multiracial English teacher and librarian, resides in her hometown Plainfield, New Jersey.  She serves as a reader and contributing editor at OPEN:  Journal of Arts & Letters.  Her work appears in Modern Haiku, apt, Glass:  A Journal of Poetry, The Rumpus, and The Paterson Literary Review among others.  She can be found at www.christinetayloronline.com