Released from my office
on a tree-lined college campus
I cruise the colors of the city
and further west down narrowing roads.
In a thick band of woods
South Walpole’s Winter Street forgets its name
passing over the Stop River
to become Clark Street in Norfolk
where the trees drop away
for barren fields
like an emptied moat
before high stone walls topped with razor wire.
Inside, sealed behind six coats
of Light Neutral, the cement block walls
have stopped dreaming of sunlight
the twin fluorescent bands overhead their only friend.
The speckled gray linoleum floor won’t talk
even when scuffed by the desk chairs
brought in to impersonate a classroom
or when I arrive during 6pm movement.
But with the door closed
and COs nowhere in sight
voices echo so eagerly
that I strain to hear the student beside me.
Tom Laughlin is a professor at Middlesex Community College in
Massachusetts where he teaches creative writing and coordinates a visiting
writers series and open readings for the Creative Writing Program. He was
a founding editor of Vortext, a volunteer staff reader for many years for
Ploughshares, and he has taught literature classes in two Massachusetts
prisons. His poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Ibbetson
Street, Drunk Monkeys, Sand Hills, Superpresent, Molecule, and
elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, The Rest of the Way, was published by
Finishing Line Press in August 2022. www.TomLaughlinPoet.com
