A Correction Officer Quarantines

SETH WIECK

April 30, 2020

On the northeast side of Amarillo

thirty-seven hundred violent inmates

are quarantined for crimes such as murder—

capital and multiple—continued

abuse of a child, indecent and lewd

exposure, several habitual burglars,

assault— on disabled persons and spouses/mates.

Each sentenced from four years to life without parole. No

death chambers here, though. Human depravity

has a scent: poorly ventilated cell

blocks and a diet of foul prison food.

The air thick, dyspeptic, smears the concrete

passages with a humid plaque. The mete

between men doesn’t exist. We have chewed

each other’s stench, coughed each other’s phlegm, pell-

melled our wasted cells. Outside, the city

cannot hear the coughing, the liquid gasp,

the odd kind of sympathy to cough in kind.

They cannot feel the twice-breathed air syncopate.

Barometric pointers beat as though they were a metronome.

In twelve hours, I’ll punch the clock and go home.

After I count sick men as they expectorate

on the floors. At hour twelve, I’ll find

mucus on my uniform. With the venom of an asp,

I’ll kiss my kids when I get home and dream

that every mouth was stopped. The whole world

held accountable.

SETH WIECK'S writing has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Curator, and The Broad River Review, where he won the Ron Rash Award in Fiction. He lives in Amarillo with his wife and three children, and teaches literature and writing at Boys Ranch High School.