The Purple Shack
Square and purple
Sometimes empty with dust balls
Rolling around, like sage rolling through an empty desert
Now filled with clothes strung out.
Like a bricked lined block in Harlem
Washed and wrinkled clothes, hanging from one side of the dingy building to the other......
Layers of bodies, like a cat house waiting, on a hot summer night for the right John to enter with a pocket of cash and a
Desire to fill.
A door with a tiny window.
What does it keep out?
Or Keep in?
When anyone with height and legs long enough could peek over to see the secrets my friends think they might hide...
But, I see in their eyes and their smirking half smiles
That they really do have secrets....
They exit shyly, timidly, sometimes with almost a hint of embarrassment.
I want to know that secret
Only I don't want to live in the shack,
The Purple Shack.
Square and purple
Sometimes empty with dust balls
Rolling around, like sage rolling through an empty desert
Now filled with clothes strung out.
Like a bricked lined block in Harlem
Washed and wrinkled clothes, hanging from one side of the dingy building to the other......
Layers of bodies, like a cat house waiting, on a hot summer night for the right John to enter with a pocket of cash and a
Desire to fill.
A door with a tiny window.
What does it keep out?
Or Keep in?
When anyone with height and legs long enough could peek over to see the secrets my friends think they might hide...
But, I see in their eyes and their smirking half smiles
That they really do have secrets....
They exit shyly, timidly, sometimes with almost a hint of embarrassment.
I want to know that secret
Only I don't want to live in the shack,
The Purple Shack.
Written by Tammy Davis
2004
Inspired by a make shift room
for overcrowding at the
Dale Correctional Facility for women
in Waterbury, VT.
2004
Inspired by a make shift room
for overcrowding at the
Dale Correctional Facility for women
in Waterbury, VT.
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