Prisoner 1858, by Steven Croft

My feet sore, broken, face

pressed against cinder blocks,

cooler than our unwashed world

of bodies in the small jail cell.

..

Dragged back to interrogation,

hung by ankles from a dark ceiling,

leg irons are tentacles of pain

the guard strums with a stick,

.

Then beats me.  The outskirts

of the city are broken shells

of buildings.  I am told I am

responsible.  My companion,

..

Fear, a vertigo that leaves and

comes back until I can’t hear

the questions or count the strikes —

it is now that I dream an other

..

Self.  Asked to give the names

of others, I think human existence

is full of such traps, that this

is why I’m here, my name spoken

..

By another, hanging here, as

I lose sense of time and believe

I am him, but, instead, I say

the names of my family silently

..

To myself, careful never to release

this precious treasure to brutes

though pain boils in my brain while

tears fall from my eyes unbidden.

..

Instead, I go home and sit beside

them, share the morning meal,

reach for my wife, my daughter,

gently, unbidden.

,,

,,

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-one-man-survived-syrias-gulag/

..

Steven Croft is the author of two chapbooks, Coastal Scenes and Moment and Time.  He has recent poems in Politics/ Letters Live, Sky Island Journal, and As It Ought to Be Magazine.