May I apologize? For the man holding us all

on strings, he of the red face, thinning hair,

he of the death of love and fear of death?

He of the foot stamp, crow bar, backhoe? He

of the better than, contortions, slick definitions blue

with torsion? He of the ex lax, imodium, tums

for the tum-tum? Milk of magnesia, milk of cow,

milk of bull? Apes, may I be sorry though I crumple

below my strings, never pull hard enough or make

the cuts? Though I dance for him as much as you?

•••
Gretchen Primack is the author of Visiting Days (Willow Books Editors Select Series), set in a maximum-security men’s prison, as well as Kind (Post-Traumatic Press), which will be republished by Lantern Books in March 2021. She is also the author of Doris’ Red Spaces (Mayapple Press) and co-wrote, with Jenny Brown, the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Cortland Review, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, and other journals. Primack has administered and taught college programs and poetry workshops in prison for many years, and she moonlights at The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, NY.

Note: This poem begins with a line from Carl Sandburg.