> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# One Poem by Christopher Soto
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/one-poem-by-christopher-soto/
- Published: 2016-11-16T12:12:19.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:41:47.000Z
- Description: Our new poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected one poem by Christopher Soto for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:23 (2016, 2017, part 2)

![hancock_when-they-found-me-i-wasnt-there-version-2_2016_jcg8851](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/hancock_when-they-found-me-i-wasn_t-there-version-2_2016_jcg8851.jpg)

Trenton Doyle Hancock, “When They Found Me I Wasn’t There, Version #2” (2016), acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 72 x 72 inches (image courtesy James Cohan and the artist)

## Los Padrinos Juvenile Detention Center, Unit Y2 

Each week  
I walk through metal  
Detectors // laughing guards  
Muffled mothers

A basketball court // a black-  
Bird // barbed wire

& More  
Barbed wire.

To be here  
Where the concrete ends  
& Page begins.

I teach poetry to incarcerated  
Boys \[ages 15-19\]. They

Are sons // & fathers // & brothers // & lovers  
& thieves

\[Just like me\]  
They want to learn

How to write  
How to take the pain & make it beautiful.

When class begins

Televisions are turned  
Off. The chessboards are  
Put away.

Put Away.  
& The boys join me // by the stain-  
Less steel lunch table

In the back of this grey  
Brick room.

Everyone looks the same  
Grey

Cotton sweatpants // sweaters sharpied with  
Numbers.

Most heads are shaved // some are  
Tattooed.

I want to ask the boys about their lives  
\[Outside of the detention center\]

But every story ends with  
The word *prison*.

“My mother… prison.”  
“My father… prison.”  
“My skin tone… prison.”  
“My language… prison.”  
“My nation… prison.”  
“My gender… prison.”  
“My ratty cloths…”

\[Will be returned upon release\].

Part II

Julian calls me *Carnal* now.

He spent the first couple weeks of  
Our poetry class trying to scare me

Away.

He would lift up his shirt  
Showing me  
The name of his gang.

The names of his dead friends  
\[Etched in ink across his stomach\].

I would tell him to  
Put his shirt down

\[But I would want him to keep his shirt up\].

Once  
Julian told me // he wasn’t afraid of  
Death.

All I could think about was his abs.

None of the boys in Unit Y2 know  
I’m a faggot.

Before each class // I’d wash  
The red paint off my nails  
Lips

Then  
Exchange my black dress  
For blue jeans.

Here // each body is disciplined for its difference.  
Each person is disciplined for their distance

\[To state power\].

Yesterday

I was reading a letter, written  
By Dee Dee

A trans woman  
Sentenced sixty years to life

\[In a men’s prison\]

For killing  
Her abusive boyfriend.

Dee Dee \[now\]  
Continues

To be raped & physically assaulted  
Behind bars.

She will not fight back  
Anymore

She has been transferred  
From prison

To prison to prison  
To prison to prison  
To prison to prison  
To prison to prison  
To prison to prison  
To prison.

She has been placed in solitary  
Confinement \[against her will\].

For her protection?

She spends twenty-three hours  
A day alone.

On hunger strike  
She was sent to the hospital.

When each act of resistance  
Is labeled as aggression

When you can’t even scream in pain  
\[Without being pathologized\].

Wouldn’t you  
Starve yourself too?

Pull each rib  
From its ribcage.

\[Anything to open the prison doors\].

Part III

In Unit Y2  
Julian is finally released.

He is let out of  
The detention center  
Early

On probation // with an  
Ankle monitor.

This monitor  
Will track his every move.

This monitor was created in the 1960s at  
Harvard University by a small group of researchers

\[Including  
R. Kirkland Schwitzgebel  
& His twin brother

Robert Schwitzgebel\]

As part of  
Some project that I don’t really care to  
Write about.

Last week  
I heard on the news

The Federal Government

Is going to start  
Using these  
\[Ankle monitors\] to

Track the movements of  
Undocumented Immigrants.

\[People\]

Often  
Fleeing poverty & violence  
With their children.

People  
Who are awaiting trial  
& Sometimes  
Deportation.

People  
Like my *tios* // like my *primas*

Like Julian’s family  
&

I want to congratulate Julian  
On his release

From Unit Y2

But I feel uncomfortable

  
Proposing the thought

That he is now *free*

That he is now human  
\[Or citizen\].

I want to tell Julian

Everything has changed  
But there is still institutionalized

Discrimination  
Against convicts

\[In access to housing // education // & employment\].

Prison is the new slavery.  
Prison is the new Jim Crow.

Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.  
Nothing has changed.

No // Julian. You are not free.

They just rearranged  
The boundaries of your cage.

Part IV

How did we end up here?

Licking our claws  
Walking in circles  
Panting.

With no water bowl  
Of course we look like animals

\[Of course we run from poachers\].

In 1906  
Ota Benga was put on exhibit

In the Bronx Zoo.

In 1896  
One hundred Sioux people  
Were put on exhibit

\[In the Cincinnati Zoo\].

There is  
A whole  
Western  
History

Of African & Native  
Bodies being displayed  
In human zoos.

The first time  
I was arrested  
& displayed

\[I was only fifteen\].

A whole neighborhood watched  
As I was stuffed into the backseat  
Of a police car.

Wearing nothing  
But my underwear

\[A cloth which hung like a white flag\]  
A beckoning to surrender.

I was placed  
In handcuffs.

& All of the faces  
In that neighborhood

Looked \[like security cameras\].

Capturing just one instance  
In the scene.

The brown boy  
The police car  
The tow-truck.

When I was arrested

For stealing my father’s car  
\[& Running away\]  
From an abusive household

Nobody saw the fear  
Nobody paid attention to

My father’s chaffed hands.

The way his grip tore  
Through my clothes.

Nobody wanted to talk about  
The circumstances  
Which created the “criminal.”

The prison isn’t just a holding cell.  
The prison is any place

Where fear is profited on.

Part V

I never wanted to be  
A criminal.

This isn’t what I had planned for.

A life of opposition, of resistance.

Where every day, I wake to

\[Threats & self-defense\].

How badly // I want to leave.  
Open all the cellar doors.

Let the brown boys free  
Like wedding doves.

Erase the names engraved  
In the bullet proof glass.

\[Spit the teeth out  
Lodged in my esophagus\].

The image I see  
Is not one of violence but I understand  
The trembling.

The image I see is a simple one

Where our fears are let go of  
& our empathy is held onto

& Julian is laying down

On a couch in his mother’s living room

Watching cartoons // after eating cereal.

\[It’s a lazy Sunday morning\]  
& Julian’s sister is still asleep.

The blankets are pulled  
Chiefly

Over her shoulders.

Sun tilting through cotton

Curtains.

She yawns & stretches. She does  
\[Whatever she wants to do\].

& Nobody wakes her  
Forcefully

Not Julian, not the police.

\* \* \*

Christopher Soto, aka Loma (b. 1991, Los Angeles), is a poet and prison abolitionist based in Brooklyn, New York. For more information visit christophersoto-poet.com.

*Readers are encouraged to submit 3–5 poems as a PDF to Wendy Xu for consideration at* [*poetry@hyperallergic.com*](mailto:poetry@hyperallergic.com)*.*