He hoarded fingernails he bit off or found
in the curtain-less showers in a pile in his cell,
like a pixie collecting shrunken satyr horns.
He ate only the cheese at lunch and pulled
off the white fat bologna and let it sweat
in the sink.
His markhor beard held dead skin and peanut butter
clumps and it refused to grow anymore.
Behind the rosewood door
he stood on the steel toilet and stared into
the sun-glow bulb dimmed behind plexiglass.
When he was tired he slept under the bunk
like a frightened child.

He was allowed an hour a day
to stretch his harpy legs,
he’d hop to the phone and talk
to the dial tone like it were a confessional
to John Paul II,
“God doesn’t know, God never knew”.

I found him on a Tuesday afternoon
after lunch cleanup hanging by a shoelace
from his light fixture,
curved like a sunflower.
I cut the stem from the pseudanthium
and it wilted into my arms.

His neck looked like a corseted waist,
and when I loosened the shoelace
his dry mouth opened and he coughed bleu cheese
returning life into my face.
His teary mud colored eyes rolled forward and we stared into
each others as I cradled him like a baby.

He later told John Paul he wanted to quiet the voices.

In ’97 he took his ***** girlfriend’s crying three
month old and quieted him by crushing his
skull in a dresser drawer.