Ten Ways of Looking at Prison Lunch

Gloria Jensen (With apologies to Wallace Stevens)

• 1. With both hands over your eyes, releasing one hand slowly to peep.
• 2. Through the eyes of a friend you have by the hand—who reads braille.
• 3. In the bing [solitary] where you can refuse to have the thing brought in at all and just lie there and sleep.
• 4. From across the steam line, where people marvel at your petite body (if only they knew it's not by choice you prefer to remain frail and cautious).
• 5. From a prison visitor's point of view — when suddenly, miraculously, all one sees is steak, greens and potatoes.
• 6. From your window late at night as you watch one man run with a rake, followed by another with a sack, followed by a corrections officer, followed by a ruckus you've not seen but heard — then all three returning, dragging a heavy sack.
• 7. Witnessing something come ashore in the bay and thinking: my, but it gave up a great fight.
• 8. Wondering why they have signs saying DO NOT PEE ON THE GRASS. Then seeing the kitchen girls go out, mow it down and bring it in.
• 9. Good Friday—when all the world's generous and the relief truck pulls up to the kitchen door to drop off loads of potatoes they couldn't unload anywhere else.
• 10. Seeing more clearly the lunch of steak, greens and potatoes—as you attack the steak first and realize the fight you witnessed (#6) is not yet over, for the beast is biting you now too.