In order to view this poem as the author intended it to appear, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in the landscape orientation on your phone.

Hell
Brian Daldorph

To be honest, I was expecting something much worse, something
bigger budget, more dramatic—burning lakes, souls ablaze,
screams and all that. Instead

it’s this sort of internment camp with rusty fences, razor
wire on top, and fat guards in mirror shades in watch towers.
Who’d try to get out, where is there to go?

Food’s the typical camp food—a lot of beans
and fried chicken, tired salad and brownies, lemonade
and weak tea
with little pink packets of sweetener.

The Hell of it to me is that I don’t have my own space—
we’re in cabins, bunks tight together. Farts,
moans, snores at night, I hardly sleep.

Nothing to do here, everyone just lies around in the heat of summer
and in winter’s cold, complaining about how we’re treated like shit
but of course no one does anything about it.

No books, just a few old newspapers and magazines that I read
over and over then pass on.

Here’s the real Hell of it, we’re not getting out:
never anything but this, never, never.

—
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).

Know anyone who might appreciate reading Brian’s poem?
Why not share the link to this page?

Have you read these poems:
Language of Chemicals and Probable Cause by Dave Seter
Royalty by Graham Murtaugh

Table of Contents