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First thing in a new day, an inmate’s cheek

gauzed over a stitched hole. “I was too long

on the phone, so he smashed my head on the wall

and I bit his lip in self-defence. Then he bit

me — you can see it under the bandage.”

And a piece of cleverness: a new kind of shank

discovered when they turned out a cell,

fibreglass given a flaying or flensing edge

in the...

Richard Greene has published three books of poetry of which the most recent, Boxing the Compass (Signal Editions, 2009), won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2010. A new collection of his work, Dante’s House, including a long poem in terza rima, will be published in the coming year by Signal Editions.

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