I come out first sounds of a crowd gathering
which often means a fight but today involves music:
Billie Jean announcing I am the one
as convict feet silently scrape the floor
sliding back & back as if rattlesnakes in reverse
across a highway avoiding cars
arms flail mime-like & rubbery
how dancers in their loose khakis
bob heads like fat pigeons
zygodactyl feet skipping wrong-way through the mud
the other cons form a circle &
hide scorn in their laughter
but the winner earns twenty dollars
at the prison commissary &
twenty bucks is a bag of chips
a box of cakes & a Coke
plus a few stamps for letters
they will write each day to no one