Jailhouse rock

The winning entries from PEN's Prison Writing Contest 2005 are in:

Terrance D. Robinson: Mascara

No matter how institutionalized you are, there is a part of you that panics whenever you get a new cellmate. It’s enough to drive you mad! So much anxiety! Was the guy an asshole? Could you hear him sleeping in Burma? Does he hear voices that command him to wake in the middle of the night and parade naked round the cell? Getting a new cellmate is like a demented parody of The Price is Right: Charlie, tell him what he’s won!
To quote Forrest Gump: "You never know what you gon git."
“Any idea who it is?” I asked, silently pleading with the Fates to let it be Halle Berry or Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Jorge Antonio Renaud: Prison Moon

"I shake myself sane
and as the echoes hang
in the frigid air I explain
to the wild-eyed guard that convicts,
like all animals under the leash,
must bay at the beauty beyond them."

Christopher Best, Live!--from Texas Death Row:

"Each morning when I arrive at work, I hand my ID card to a guard at the building entrance. I swear, lately I have come to smell and taste the death-row building even before I step inside. As I walk in, I feel the dread on my flesh, even in me. Next comes the strip search, the ubiquitous humiliation of prison life, also magnified on death row because it’s conducted with much more detail, specificity and time. My co-workers and I remove every stitch of clothing. One guard carefully inspects each clothing item, turning socks, boxers, pants, and shirt inside-out, inspecting seams for hidden items, crinkling every square inch of fabric. Our shoes are bent, unlaced, pounded, and tossed, insoles left here and there on the floor.
Next, each of us spreads our legs, opens our butt cheeks, shows the bottoms of our feet, holds up our package of manhood, opens our mouth, and turns all about, arms held high. Next, each of us sits on a metal-detecting chair, which looks at our guts with some sort of high-tech imaging, to make sure we haven’t swallowed a weapon or contraband. Next, we place our faces on a metal-detecting plate on the wall, first one side then the other, as a double-check on the mouth. From this point and all day long, a series of cameras bear down on us in all the hallways, and guards stationed at a series of gates check all movement and action."