Fall 2009

In the Women's Prison, San José, Costa Rica:

Doll Making Self-Esteem Workshop

by Mark Smith-Soto

Nothing masculine there, inside the bars clanging
shut, except for yours truly stolen into the coop,
surrounded by prisoner moms who can’t stop staring
at the two Americans invited to witness their stabs
at rehabilitation, my social worker wife, and I,
red-faced, trying to stuff my Nikon out of sight. 
Blunt scissors, glue and button eyes will stitch
raggedy Anns they’ll be left holding when we leave.

A doll’s a clumsy thing in a man’s hand, mocking
his lifetime of refusing to play, an innocence
dissonant in the cement room.  While her mother cuts
and sews a scarecrow with black braids, one girl,
maybe two years old, takes off her shoe for me
to slip back on; I kneel to oblige, but now both
the sneaker and the sock come off the offered foot,
an invitation no Prince Charming could refuse.

At three, their children are sent away, the matron
explains—it may be years before they see them again.
They've caught sight of my camera pushing out
my jacket, whisper to each other, and finally I get it.
Still, I’m shy with the machine, the snapping lens
so blatant in its pointing, but they primp up the kids
and practice their wide smiles, offering themselves
quite simply to the shutter that takes and takes.

I have them now, double prints, one to send back
and one to keep.  I had no idea I shot so many,
big and little women holding their kids up
like fruit for sale, hoping to cast the best light
on the amber eyes, the chubby inner arms, the halo
of quickly half-brushed fine brown hair—in one,
I catch my wife half-turning away from me, as if I
was the only one from the other side of the walls.