Rebecca Gethin

What I learned from teaching in a prison

How to unlock and lock every gate and door I went through, 
putting the two keys with their long shafts back in the pouch 
on my belt each time.  So many doors and gates to be unlocked 
and locked, even the door to the Ladies and to the photocopier room, 
especially the Staff Room. A labyrinth of gates and doors 
along winding passages, my fingers smelling of iron.  

How my classroom door could bang open and a man be hauled 
from the group for deportation. How a man’s eyes would accuse me.  
I turned my back on smokers in the yard so as not to see them. 
Once when I entered a cell the inmate leaned toward me to say 
It’s not safe here.  Another said writing was the one thing that could stop 
his gambling habit after five prison terms so far. 
  
How the keys unlocked my way into imagining my father’s sentences, 
visualising him beyond the Visitors’ room where I last saw him, 
knowing now he couldn’t open a door while his heart gave out. 
The stink of fusty mould infested the pores of my hands 
and was only scrubbed off with perfumed soap 
which he’d beg me to smuggle in and which I’d forget. 

Rebecca Gethin has written five poetry publications and two novels. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor.  Her poems are published in various magazines and anthologies.  Vanishings was published by Palewell Press in 2020.  She won the first Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages. Her next pamphlet will be published by Maytree Press in 2024. She blogs (very) sporadically at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.