Neutralize!

           for Silvia, Alejandrina, and Susan

by Mitsuye Yamada

Author's preface:

“Neutralize!” was written to honor political prisoners. Since the 1960's, in spite of repeated denials, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has taken into custody a number of prisoners for their political beliefs, charging them with conspiracy and sedition. By the 1990s, the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience (IPOC), an organization that monitors U.S. political prisoners, had identified at least a hundred such prisoners in our federal prisons. During the Carter and Clinton administrations, a number of them were given conditional clemency and released, but a few still remain in our prisons, some of them having already served from 25 to 35 years.

For over 20 years, I have visited women political prisoners held in federal prisons in the U.S., some of whom have experienced brutal conditions, including long-term sensory deprivation. In 1996, three of the women – who were among seven political prisoners sentenced in The Resistance Conspiracy Case – were sent to the High Security Unit for Women in Lexington, Kentucky. They became targets of an experiment in a small group isolation and sensory deprivation cells run by the BOP in an underground unit. They were held there for almost two years until Amnesty International intervened, and released into the general population in various prisons. During their incarceration, the late Rev. S. Michael Yasutake, the former director of IPOC, wrote, “These political prisoners, by their principled protests against injustice, are saying to the rest of us that any authority that rules by brute force is immoral: whether it be by police power, military power or prison power that oppress the weak and the poor, or by laws made to benefit the few at the expense of the many.”

No matter how many times I visit these women in a prison setting, I am awed by the dignity and vitality they have maintained despite their experiences of physical and psychological abuse. I am shocked by the knowledge that diabolic minds in our own prison system can concoct such deliberate and methodical schemes against our fellow human beings. Recent events in Iraq and the suggestion that “after 9/11 the restrictions in the Geneva Convention no longer apply” compound my horror.

. . . poetry . . .

has been my spiritual guide

throughout my incarceration

in the darkest of times

I turn to Neruda and Hikmet

and Rukeyser and Ritsas

and Chrytos

and Whitman. . .

           (Excerpt from a letter by a U.S. Political Prisoner)

They mean to kill

the soul in me

Neutralize!

White white

no poetry in

white floors walls ceiling white

white chairs tables sink white

only when I close my eyes do I see

beyond the white windowless walls

springtime of lacy trees

green against baby blue.

There is silence silence more

silence

to drown out the silence

I fill my inner ear with robinsongs

human screeches and scrapes

sounds bouncing against the white walls?

Dead air in the cell

in my mind

the zest of lemon

and the sweetness of wildflowers.

Willfully bland diet aimed

to erase use of my tongue

Add a pinch of salt with the taste

of sweat or even of blood

anywhere on my body

the taste of cheese.

One human touch

my own arms enfold me

my fingers move over my sagging breasts

my nipples and soft parts of my body

respond.

Neutralize!

1996

For more information about Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience (IPOC) please contact the present director, Nozomi Ikuta , P.O. Box 770608, Lakewood, OH 44107, 216-780-9262

Mitsuye Yamada is a poet and educator living in Irvine, Calif. She was born in Kyushu, Japan, and raised in Seattle, Wash., until the outbreak of World War II, when her family was removed to a concentration camp in Idaho. Her book Camp Notes and Other Writings recounts this experience. Mitsuye, a former board member of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company ( The Witness ), may be reached by email at myamada@igc.org .