Episode #166 Small Illuminations from REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR w/Special Guest Tara Betts

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Tara Betts to discuss the poem "Small Illuminations" from her forthcoming collection REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR. They discuss the legacy of Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, the realities of incarceration, and how the collection REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR grew over time.

Get a copy of REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR, here: https://wordworksbooks.org/product/refuse-to-disappear/#:~:text=In%20Refuse%20to%20Disappear%20Tara,devoted%20attention%20to%20Black%20Life.

Small Illuminations

By: Tara Betts

I.

Albert is a gentle tower.

His arms arched over tabletop

like bridge beams or girders.

Even if he does not understand

everything he reads, he smiles

like a good kid, like the kid he

probably was 30-some-years

ago when he was in the wrong

car with the wrong people

at the wrong time that he will

never get back.

II.

The attention to detail

borders on flawless.

Unscuffed white sneakers,

perfected lined fades

tucked under precisely

folded skullies immaculate

with what you got as a

clean, hard-fought pride.

III.

One week, I bring

crisp folders,

a bundle of sharpened pencils

with full pink erasers, round

and soft as a doll’s blush.

They rub away small errors,

clearing smudges from a page

like an actual correction.

IV.

I look for Albert’s easy grin first

when I walk into the concrete block

classroom. Locked in the education

building, relieved that the broken

window denies the cold like a plea.

One brother in blues with thermal sleeves

peeking out of the dull faded ocean

of cloth arching over his torso.

A cellmate hands me the slightly worn,

safeguarded, staple-bound book of poems—

the signature resolute and matching letters

of a poet’s name who strolled into prison

like a mother without fear of any child.

Margaret Burroughs—more than a decade

since she left the cell of her body. I clutch

her poems knowing how they passed

from her hands like a prayer. We both smile—

small illuminations in a dark hell—when

the cellmate says Albert wanted you to have this.

He got transferred. He knew you’d keep it safe.

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