One poem in Jorge Renaud’s new collection, The Restlessness of Bound Wrists, makes the reader question whether the book in their hands would be allowed into Texas prisons—or whether it would be culled by administrators, left “to burn with other / slashed seditionary / lies, all lies, unfit for our rehabilitation.”
Lamentation for Literature (excerpt)
We will not read this book.
It will not whisper its histories
to us. We will not
listen to its secrets,
be seduced
by its sweet mysteries,
compelled to arise
revolt question
accuse desire
confess dream
Love die.
We will not.
read. this. book.
Renaud—a longtime social justice advocate who has worked with Latino Justice, Grassroots Leadership, and other prominent nonprofits—writes from experience and from a place of all-consuming empathy. He spent years incarcerated in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system, and since his release in 2008 has been working as an advocate and writer. In his new collection, out in May from Plancha Press, he trades in his megaphone for a pen, his essay style for something more raw, but the result is no less loud, no less informative: “Does it matter / if the testimony tonight / or any night / is whispered or shouted / if it / takes the shape / of a murmur / or a moan?”
In 28 poems, he inhabits different narrators, touching on often unmentioned aspects of incarceration. The physical distance between two lovers who “have to say / i love you / through reinforced / chicken wire” and the obstacles that stand in the way of human touch. There’s a lot about physicality in general: “the gulp of scabby / lips / and dried gasping desperate / throats,” “the rough tongue of loneliness,” and the titular “restlessness / of bound wrists.” About the numbness built up, guarding against all emotions, good and bad. The experience of a narrator taking a life, of discovering someone who’s taken their own.
Although this is his first published poetry collection, he’s by no means new to the craft. His essays and some poems have been published in major newspapers and magazines across the United States (including the Texas Observer). He’s been writing poetry for decades—he bartered some poems and paintings for a wedding ring when he married his ex-wife, who was a poetry professor—but he said he never cared about publishing. He told the Observer he considers himself “an activist who writes” but was convinced by a friend who told him it was time—that he “really need[ed] to publish some fucking poetry.”
It won’t take readers long to digest the collection, but it’s meant to be revisited. In order, the transition from one poem to the next seems to intentionally imbue more meaning in each. A poem entitled “Prison” about the lack of beauty inside is followed by “Gravity,” the first poem in the collection about desperation and suicide, though not the last.
This isn’t a collection of poems couched in hindsight; they’re about existing within the carceral system, even after release. They’re undated, and Renaud wrote them over the course of 15 years. Each has the detail, clarity, and emotional sharpness that suggest proximity to the scenes, but overall the collection shines with the wisdom of perspective. Renaud’s poetry masterfully brings the audience past the gates of the prison and keeps them there—through pain and discomfort—until they’re forced to understand the humanity inside the system.
It’s news to me
My mother fell.
She broke her neck.
If the blame lay in her sluggish heart
or in the bottle that she clutched
I was not told.
Other than the tears I shed
When I wrote her eulogy,
I sit and wait the flood unsprung,
I wonder if the well is dry
and what is wasted in my eyes.
My brother died.
Bloated
in a rented bed he gurgled
when he drowned,
without the coin to pay
the gowned professionals
who may have saved him.
Other than a low escaping wail
when that finality was nailed
into my head, no rage
has pricked my skin.
If i mourn unceasingly
it comes as news to me.
My daughter grows
and grows,
has crawled
and walks
and sprints
unaided now,
without my guiding hand.
If that wracked me once,
if that cracked my shell
and spilled humanity
upon the concrete floor,
it moves me little now.
What does
this place
to me?
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