Poetry

Self Portrait Sonnet: San Quentin

In California, in 1961/
I was born, the fourth of what would be seven/
kids—six girls, one boy. I went to Sunday School/
and Bluebirds. Just the word “Berkeley” (at age six)/
frightened me. It was Hell, I thought, or pretty close./
I was nine, I think, when Angela Davis/
and the San Quentin five, down at the courthouse,/
taped Judge Haley’s head to a sawed-off shotgun/
timed with a cell block raid that beat The System/
senseless. We took the bus to Marin for school/
and afterward played up on The Hill—where sticks/
marked convicts unclaimed bodies all in rows—/
or talked with Dennis, the Trustee inmate. It/
scared me more than Berkeley when they let him out./

Ellen Rae
c 14 April 1989