A Poem For Sunday

by Alice Quinn

“Julia Tutwiler State Prison for Women” by Andrew Hudgins:

On the prison’s tramped-hard Alabama clay

two green-clad women walk, hold hands,

and swing their arms as though they’ll laugh,

meander at their common whim, and not

be forced to make a quarter turn each time

they reach a corner of the fence. Though they

can’t really be as gentle as they seem

perhaps they’re better lovers for their crimes,

the times they didn’t think before acting—

or thought, and said to hell with the consequences.

Most are here for crimes of passion.

They’ve killed for jealousy, anger, love,

and now they sleep a lot. Who else

is dangerous for love—for love

or hate or anything? Who else would risk

a ten-year walk inside the fenced in edge

of a field stripped clean of soybeans or wheat?

Skimming in from the west and pounding hard

across the scoured land, a summer rain

raises puffs of dust with its first huge drops.

It envelopes the lingering women. They hesitate,

then race, hand in hand, for shelter, laughing.

(From Saints and Strangers by Andrew Hudgins. Copyright © 1985 by Andrew Hudgins. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. The poem also can be found in Poems of the American South, Everyman Pocket Poets. Photo by Eugen Anghel)