Life Lines: Recent Episodes
None
Life Lines is an audio journal of poetry, spoken word, and other creative writing by men on Death Row, USA. Contributors live on Death Rows in North Carolina and Tennessee.
Life Lines is about connection. It’s about finding surprising spaces to share endangered, beautiful life. It’s about recognizing our power and our powerlessness to give and take life.
We feature three new pieces each week, words which we hope invite communion, however limited and imperfect, with those struggling to live inside state prisons.
Because of state laws restricting access to prisons, the authors record these poems by phone. As you listen carefully, let the line static become a reminder of all the lines – race, class, iron bars and barbed wire – we’ve constructed between ourselves. If we allow them, these pieces can open new, shared spaces for us in spite of these boundaries, if only for a moment. Take a chance with us: listen.
Media reports have cultivated the misperception that the casualties of prison officials is a new trend in violence, not a boiling point of failed policies and frustrations.
The light hurt to look upon. For the briefest moment, I remembered another life. Then it was gone.
Every breath fueled by the underground heartbeat lets a hip hop head know he’s still alive.
Overly relying on incarceration as a panacea to crime expresses every weakness of the criminal justice system.
It’s crazy—I’m in this sold out stadium with 55,000 fans who have no idea a 10 year-old child is trapped in a dark hole beneath them.
Although investing millions in staffing may increase prison security, it is a temporary fix that does not address the causes of violence in prisons.
Maybe Silent Sam is employing his silence to prod protesters to be silent and think about this country's glorious history and revered personalities if they want to point the fingers of blame for slavery, racism, and white supremacy.