Erik Tschekunow

This Call Is from an Inmate at a Federal Prison

“What do you do
all day, Dad?”

I’m not sure
there’s a way

to keep the hole
from widening

or over the hard
months to come

fantasies of his father’s
punishment from

filling it.
Trays of gruel.

Shackles. Pickaxes
swung in harrowing

arcs into infinite
flint. Skinheads,

black-booted, stomping
in the dingy showers

a docile body.
And does this man

who is his dad
deserve it?

On the freeway
my son will strain

his neck to look
as long as possible

at the Day-Glo
gang bagging litter,

the long rifle
on a guard’s shoulder

the scariest thing
he’s ever seen.

Good guys, bad
guys, we’re all

the same guys, I want
to tell him but

I’m not sure.
I’m lost in

the crosshairs in
the tatt on the back

of my neighbor’s skull,
the gray phone room

packed as always
with uncomplicated

professions of zeal.
“There are a lot

of books,” I say turning
up my voice like a TV dad.

“That’s good, isn’t
it, Dad?” he says

gently, hopefully, like
each text must contain

a shiver
of the key

that can unlock
all of this.

Erik Tschekunow, released from prison and repentant, is still searching for the right way to say he’s sorry. His poems have won awards from PEN America and The Freshwater Review and have recently appeared in Poetry, Rattle, and The Sun. He now lives in Minneapolis.