Wanda Morrow Clevenger writes

Just 17 when I entered
Leavenworth.
Got the infractions put on me
of talking and threatening
to knock the brains out of
another prisoner.
Just 2 years later
I was dead
of pulmonary hemorrhages.

I had been ailing for sometime
with rheumatism
and a severe cough
but the hemorrhage come on
very sudden by bursting
a blood vessel in my lung,
making the end
quick.

My sister wrote
how she was very angry
that the warden didn’t do his business
better
and let them know sooner, though
the warden did what he could –
mailed and telegraphed
to the last known address.

Did you know the railroad companies
won’t receive bodies until
they’ve been buried for at least
6 months? 

--Prisoner 2899


Charles White 


Larceny put me in
Leavenworth
but then
I attacked a guy
while he was busy
on the toilet

I attempted to escape
through the tunnels

I incited mutiny and
did escape
another time when
I led an assault
on Sheriff Peeso
at the county jail after
put there
for a year,
escaping with 3 other
prisoners––1 white man
and 2 negroes

and after returned
to jail
was indicted
for murder of the guard
during the Leavenworth
mutiny

the New York Times
reprinted an article from
Valentine Democrat out of
Nebraska calling me
“one of the ringleaders
of the mutineers”

but was larceny
put me in. 



– Gilbert Mullins


Prisoner 3283 


I did 5 days in solitary
for drawing lewd
and immoral pictures

newspaper clippings report
I owned land
––oil fields they figured––
worth ten, twenty million

I died in May of ‘29
before illegal lien charges
against L J Disney
went to court. 

--Prisoner 3644 



Thomas Johnson; 1929 





























No fingerprints are on file
since the fingers of my right
hand are crippled and
drawn up.
A fine mess all around.
Curved spine.
Wry neck, head tilted
––torticollis it’s called.
I managed to escape once
but got returned.
When I was pardoned
they kept my drawings
for a machine
that puts straw on
broom handles
maybe they figured drawings
was wasted on me. 

–Prisoner 4205 
Edward Lisle 

The Lansing warden thinks
I am not strong minded
and need
someone to care for me
what with my two sons
in Leavenworth. 

– Prisoner 2285
Mary Young 



[Some years back my daughter-in-law worked in the library of a museum in Missouri where they briefly had a display of early 1900s Leavenworth inmate mugshots. The display was called "Mugged."  With the mugshots were brief descriptions of the inmates.  My daughter-in-law thought I might make use of the files in my writing (which are open to the public), which sometimes contained a great deal of information and sometimes contained only a sentence or two. I began writing poetry in first person using the files.  As these people are all deceased, I thought it gave an eerie "from the grave" perspective to the work.]

 

 "You never quit looking. You sit there, look at a blank piece of paper, take a photo of your mind and wait for your hands"--Harvey Ford, inmate at Statesville Prison, Illinois