Jeff knorr

Ashland MFA Candidate

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION:
DIAL 1 TO BE CONNECTED TO VISITING

I would just like to hold you, the way
I might hold a horse in the pasture.

Please listen carefully: for instructions in English Press one
para Español oprima dos

I listen for your voice in hushes deep as lakes.

Please listen carefully or visit our website
as rules and regulations have changed
for visitation and acceptable clothing

I will wear or not wear whatever they tell me
and your grandmother has gone down the road
to Walmart for a new bra without an underwire.

If you would like to speak to a representative
stay on the line or visit the VPASS portal
on the CDCR website to make a visiting
appointment

Ok, Saturdays at 10:30, it’s scheduled,
we’ll count each visit like marbles that roll away.

i had a dream about you

There were birds, thousands and thousands
of blackbirds, so many it turned the sky black
and then the sky twisted because all of the birds followed each other

and then you stood in front of me
in the sun, the birds flying against your
copper skin out of the tattoo on your chest, the ones you inked

flying right out of the words Guatemalan
Pride.
You took me by the hand and we walked
into the woods where you were a child

again and you opened your hand and showed me
an owl pellet that looked like a mouse, so we pulled
back the fur and looked at all the tiny bones so frail it was hard

to imagine they were the skeleton of any animal.
There were more birds and a truck. We drove and you slept.
I could hear your breath. I heard your heart beat

as if I was holding you when you were small.
When you woke you said, I shot someone, I had to you said, they had guns
I had a gun. You can’t tell anyone, you said.

Then a deer was on the narrow shoulder of the road so we stopped
and when I turned it over, wet because it was raining,
it was a man in jeans and a hoodie and you said that’s him

so I unzipped his sweatshirt and it unzipped his body
and your gun and a copper bullet were inside his belly.
I said, it’s ok. I don’t think you did this.

You held me in the moonlight after the rain stopped and
said it will be ok, I am ok, dad. Your eyes
were dark and your arms were prison strong, the birds flew

toward your shoulders again and blackbirds watched from the trees.
You told me not to worry about them. In an instant
there were cows, a huge herd of cows


and you rode behind them with a white hat, no saddle
a Guatemalan vaquero, and I watched you drive all of them
over a rise in the distance and you were gone.

And I stood in the road which turned to a field and woke up.

The house was quiet, your room empty. The dogs breathed on the floor
and you’re still gone, still locked up, probably sleeping
under the inked blackbird sky.

JEFF KNORR WAS THE POET LAUREATE OF SACRAMENTO FROM 2012-2016 AND IS THE AUTHOR OF FOUR POETRY COLLECTIONS: THE COLOR OF A NEW COUNTRY (MAMMOTH BOOKS), STANDING UP TO THE DAY (PECAN GROVE PRESS), KEEPER (MAMMOTH BOOKS), AND THE THIRD BODY (CHERRY GROVE COLLECTIONS). HIS OTHER WORKS INCLUDE THE CO-AUTHORED MOORING AGAINST THE TIDE: WRITING POETRY AND FICTION (PRENTICE HALL); THE ANTHOLOGY, A WRITER'S COUNTRY (PRENTICE HALL); AND THE RIVER SINGS: AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY (PRENTICE HALL). HE LIVES IN SACRAMENTO AND IS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND CREATIVE WRITING AT SACRAMENTO CITY COLLEGE.