Prisoners Can't Grow Their Own Food At Florida Prisons
They could plant the fields that lie like open palms
beside the razor wire, lay seed into the warm
Florida dirt that never truly sleeps, let men
who have been buried in concrete feel the soft
argument of soil against their hands again,
and grow food the way the state once did,
slow and honest, fed by sun and sweat.
They could raise cattle where scrub and wiregrass
already bend toward grazing, milk cows at dawn,
collect eggs still warm as breath, lift fish
from green ponds flashing like coins—
protein not poured from a sack of powder,
not pressed from soy and sodium,
but walking, swimming, clucking life.
They could feed their own—
collards and beans, rice and squash,
cornmeal thick as the voice of a grandmother,
milk in real cartons, fruit that stains the fingers,
meals that build blood instead of clogging it,
that lower the sugar in the veins,
that keep hearts from breaking early.
They could teach men how to keep something alive,
how to watch for illness, how to measure feed,
how to clean a blade, how to respect a body,
animal or human, how to make a living
out of tending instead of taking,
how to leave prison knowing
how to grow the next meal.
They could save millions and spend less on pills,
less on dialysis, less on broken men,
and turn prisons into granaries for hurricanes,
into barns of second chances,
into quiet classrooms where the land
speaks more clearly than any judge ever did.
But trucks keep coming, long and loud,
hauling contracts instead of carrots,
profits instead of potatoes,
because someone always gets paid
when a prison stays hungry,
and a hungry system votes the way it’s told.
So the fields stay empty, the barns stay locked,
and men eat punishment three times a day,
because rehabilitation doesn’t fit on a campaign sign,
and growing food doesn’t grow donors,
and corruption tastes better
to those who never have to swallow
what they feed the caged.
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