<\/p>\n
The 2012 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival runs for the 2nd-4th November, and for the next week, Ink Sweat & Tears will be featuring poems on the theme \u2018Poetry as a Lifeline\u2019 which is the subject of the IS&T-supported Discussions and Short Takes this year.\u00a0 Today’s poem is from D. Nurkse who is appearing at the Festival.\u00a0 Find out more about the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival here<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Codes<\/strong><\/p>\n Command v. Bradley Manning<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Because I stole the codes, they make me sleep naked.<\/p>\n At nineteen hours, two agents collect my shirt,<\/p>\n pants, shorts\u2013-I had never had laces or a belt.<\/p>\n Their eyes burn behind identical ski masks<\/p>\n but they never speak, touch, or look at me.<\/p>\n Perhaps if they did, they couldn\u2019t make love<\/p>\n to their girlfriends in the city. Or they have orders.<\/p>\n They wear white latex gloves and their boots<\/p>\n are wrapped in cellophane. One has tongs. I get a sheet,<\/p>\n but at dawn I give it up and stand nude at attention<\/p>\n outside the triple-ply steel door. One guards me<\/p>\n with a drawn Glock, the other searches my cell,<\/p>\n though there is nothing, a board, a slop-hole.<\/p>\n At certain angles he puts his hand over the camera<\/p>\n so he won\u2019t be recognized a thousand years from now.<\/p>\n I guess this, I can\u2019t focus, my eyes are forward.<\/em><\/p>\n You will see a whorled thumb print, a smudge of hair,<\/p>\n then the tape will show my dangling sex, my pale belly,<\/p>\n my thick yellow toenail, because I stole the codes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dennis Nurkse<\/strong> teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College and is on the board of Amnesty International USA.\u00a0 He was shortlisted\u00a0 for the 2011\u00a0 Forward Prize for Voices Over Water<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0A Night in Brooklyn<\/em> <\/a>(2012) is his ninth collection.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes: “This poem re-imagines the actual pretrial detention conditions of Bradley Manning, the young soldier who publicized confidential files in the Wiki leaks case. The poem would hope to bridge–to an infinitesimal degree, at best–the isolation of the prisoner and the outside world.”\u00a0 The Codes<\/em> is\u00a0 forthcoming in The Manhattan Review.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2012 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival runs for the 2nd-4th November, and for the next week, Ink Sweat & Tears will be featuring poems on the theme \u2018Poetry as a Lifeline\u2019 which is the subject of the IS&T-supported Discussions and Short Takes this year.\u00a0 Today’s poem is from D. Nurkse who is appearing at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-as-a-lifeline","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3435"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3439,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions\/3439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}