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Gabriel
Brian Daldorph

Gabriel slips into my room:
I can’t keep him out all the time.
No locks on our doors in this place.
He sits in the chair in front of me, holds my hands,
”They’re trying to kill me,
trying to poison me, they’ve been putting cyanide in my food
but I’m smarter than they think—I pretend to eat it.”

Last week Gabriel warned us
of a tsunami that would sweep
us all away. “We’re in the center of a continent,” we said.

He’s told us about missile launches
and the government counting down.
About a massive earthquake about to split
this country right down the middle.
Gabriel asks if he can have my crackers
because he’s so hungry.

That’s the trouble
that comes when everyone’s trying to kill you:
it makes you so hungry.

—
Brian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas and Douglas County Jail. He has taught in England, France, Japan, Senegal, and Zambia. He edits Coal City Review and also edited Douglas County Jail Blues (2010), an anthology of inmate poetry. His latest books are Kansas Poems (Meadowlark Press, 2021) and Words Is a Powerful Thing (University of Kansas Press, 2021).

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