By Osaze Osayande

Brett Story's film, The Prison in 12 Landscapes, confronts one with the consequences of our present-day Prison Industrial Complex without ever taking the viewer within the walls of a prison. The film effectively challenges conceptual ideologies of where the grasp of the carceral system ends and highlights how prisons have discretely influenced a plethora of aspects of our society. The film challenges the viewer to imagine what our world would look like, independent of the carceral system's influence. In the St. Louis County landscape, viewers watch how the PIC upholds the power of racial capitalism and discriminatory policing, impacting the daily lives of Black Americans far outside of prisons- a theme this zine further explores.

By Stephen Mead

Who cut that hole in this fence of chain link,

gave such a hopeful opening

with any thorny barbs clipped off

so as to not poke, pierce, snag?

That space has the shape of a benevolent womb

and certainly an infant's or small toddler's passage

can be imagined, hands of protective carrying

meeting  a separate pair on the other side.

Here. Go now. Keep safe-----

By Bud Sturguess

A young boy coughs

and sputters something in Spanish

I don't know what he said

Maybe a border word

I only know my words, buzz words

Words to Tweet

By Russell Willis

Turns out, I knew it all along.

It was there, and not so deep within.

There, not lurking but waiting.

Waiting to be discovered…no…rediscovered;

knowing that it was true (or false) because,

turns out, I have a conscience.

I knew it even when I tried to ignore it,

pretending it was not, insisting it was not,

shouting that it was not, AND NEITHER ARE YOU!

By Lew Jones

And the time flew & danced in merriment like new June leaves

New Summer, new river, glimmering starlight in the flowing aqua

Glowing fragrant lilting rosemary dew –colors soon explode into view

I looked for the night I waited for the stars- to hold life in a royal embrace

By Robert Beveridge                                             

A threadbare forest in miniature.

He lines matchsticks up on the tabletop,

counts them out, compares

with the rest of his pack of Mavericks.

Seven of each, maybe a quarter more

if you count the butt he had to stuff

back in the pack because he couldn't

find a trash can.