Editors Note: Kamau-Aka-Brandon George is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation prison correspondents. He is a poet writing from behind the razor wires at the Nottoway Correctional Center in Virginia.
Phoenix
Like a beautiful star viewed from a distance, obscured by the light years that separate the world from her brilliance and her from their ignorance Beautifully encrypted with a celestial image all eyes at attention yet no one gets it, it's a lonesome existence so she bottles her light inside. White zinfandel bottles that provide a place for her pain to hide. More than once in a while opening her "wine" eagle spread on any bed she finds rest from the rocky hills she climbs. Climatiz cries that tear tears from her "I" not mere tears but spirit drops that metamorph into bright embers warm enough to spark life but too hot to sustain the enigma of her aspirations not mere tears but latent promise that evaporated on hotel pillow cases leaving traces of her yearning soul remnants of her internal erosion seeping through as the bottle she hid in bursts open leaving exposed what she fought so hard to keep closed she implodes and from the ashes of implosion she's born brand new. Like A Phoenix.