\u201cThe world is better now that you are here.\u201d That was what the sign above the entrance read. It was wooden; the letters were black. I remember analyzing it as I shuffled off the bus, my mind going through the motions of acceptance, making sure to harden my features, set my shoulders, align my stare. I thought of my daughter. I was glad I talked to her the night before. There would be a hold; communication was a privilege, of which I held none. I don\u2019t think the world is better. No, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s better at all.<\/p>\n
We shuffled in line, one by one. The guards, in hopes of displaying how tough they were, stood in a line, as the warden himself did his welcoming speech, reminding us of our standing, reminding us of our place. Gut pushed out, the man was hefty, a good ol\u2019 boy with a heart attack around the corner. I don\u2019t think the world is better. No, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s better at all. One by one, they shaved our heads. They said it was for sanitation, but I found it to be a lesson in degradation, a way of breaking us, which was what this was all about. It was about control. They had it; we had none. Locks fell, beards fell, hair piled, as the barbers, inmates themselves, cut the hair off our faces, our heads, to be bagged and trashed. I don\u2019t think the world is better. No, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s better at all.<\/p>\n
We were assigned our dorms, which housed around two hundred, the jungle, beds stacked, three high, single file, with no more than three feet between each bed. Our homes. We kept them neat, as most convicts do, as a way of keeping control over what we could. It was hot inside our concrete fortress, as summer in South Georgia is. Sweat poured from the walls, and tensions flared. When violence broke out, I thought of the families. Brothers, sons, and fathers with loved ones, alone. I don\u2019t think the world is better. No, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s better at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe world is better now that you are here.\u201d That was what the sign above the entrance read. It was wooden; the letters were black. I remember analyzing it as I shuffled off the bus, my mind going through the motions of acceptance, making sure to harden my features, set my shoulders, align my stare. … Continue reading The World Is Better, They Say<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"issue":[6876],"class_list":["post-2119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","issue-6876"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 10:05:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}