Sometimes You Get the Bull, Sometimes

inmate clown dodges bull
by Jack B. Bedell

There’s got to be a moment
            when the inmate clown

wants the bull to stomp him out,
            that long second when the dust

kicked up from the bull’s charge
            rises toward heaven

and people in the stands
            hold all the air in their lungs,

that hard pause when it’s not a life
            passing through the eye

of your mind’s needle, but the sweet
            nothing of a day’s real end.

Tomorrow holds more work in the field,
            more slop on metal trays for supper,

more time in lockdown playing chess
            through the bars of your cell, or

reading by whatever light makes it through
            the chain link fence outside your cage.

And who wouldn’t think about that hard ground
            pressing into their spine, how

one quick punch from the bull’s forelegs
            would press them straight into deep, deep

earth, no doctor needed, no crying to do, no
            way to hold a spade come morning?

Editor’s Note: This poem was inspired by the photograph Angola Prison Rodeo, 2013 by Chandra McCormick, on display through May 18, 2019 at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum in Louisiana. The photograph appears in the traveling exhibition Slavery, the Prison Industrial Complex: Photographs by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick. The Angola Prison Rodeo is the longest running prison rodeo in the U.S.


Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collections are Elliptic (Yellow Flag Press, 2016), Revenant (Blue Horse Press, 2016), and No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, fall 2018). He is currently serving as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.