Edward Harkness: My Father’s Uncles Doing Time

Their sorry, sorry asses. Bad year, 1929.

Neither one is yet 30 in the grim prison photos

I received from the state archives.

Dull-eyed, sullen—greasy dark hair on one,

fair strands drape the forehead of the other,

both faces aged and lined from the morphine

they couldn’t get out of their systems.

Bad year, 1917, the Great War winding down,

but not the “soldier’s disease,”

nor the Spanish Flu pandemic to follow.

Fifty million swept off all across

the sorry, sorry earth. Bad year, 1918.

Their mother wrote to the governor—

her penciled words will bring tears

to your eyes, as they did the governor’s.

Sir, my boys are sick. Prison

will kill them first, and I will follow.

Sir, I’m on my knees. He signed the pardon

and they walked. Too late. They were yo-yos,

in and out and in, addle-brained by dope.

One taught himself leathercraft inside:

studded belts, purses, holsters—

tooled with acorns, oak leaves, roses

you can smell. On the billfold

in my back pocket is the carved head

of a horse so fine you want to reach out,

let it bat its eyes and nuzzle your hand.

Morphine and time did its work on them.

Dad once took me to a hospital where

Sweetie—that was his name, Sweetie—

younger of the two, lay dying. Gray faced,

eyes hollowed, he turned to me, smiled,

did not or could not speak. Somehow,

there by his bed, he managed to lift one hand.

I still feel his cool fingers on my wrist.

I’d never seen needle tracks. There they were,

mapped along his splotchy arms.

Seeing Sweetie that day, I learned a lesson

about cruelty, how it peers over the top of a trench,

waits for you across the cratered expanse

of no-man’s land, takes aim and fires,

not to kill, but to disfigure, maim.

You’re never the same. You find ways

to hide the scars. It’s a losing proposition.

I grieve for their sorry, sorry asses.

for the sickness that swallowed them,

for the wounds that left them lame

all the days of their sorry, sorry lives.

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Copyright 2022 Edward Harkness

The Law of the Unforeseen, Edward Harkness’ third full-length collection of poems (released September 2018) is available at Pleasure Boat Studio. He lives with his wife, Linda, in Shoreline, Washington. 

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Author’s note:

I’m back home in Shoreline, WA, and I’ve attached one of many mugshots of my uncle […] Harkness (b. Iowa, 1897), this one dating from 1931. He and his younger brother, […], became morphine addicts during the Spanish Flu Epidemic. For the rest of their lives, they committed petty crimes to support their habits, as my poem details. Of course I’ve fictionalized certain details in the poem (including the name “Sweetie,”  but some details are, alas, true. After countless arrests, the pair were sentenced to life imprisonment for being habitual criminals (early charges included being “jointists,” or operators of a “joint” or speak-easy during Prohibition). Their mother, my great-grandmother, Bertha Harkness, did in fact write a letter to the Washington governor pleading for leniency, And in fact the governor granted both brothers a pardon after they’d spent years behind bars.

I seriously wavered about sending you this picture. These two brothers brought huge shame to my father’s father, Ryle Harkness, the only one of the three brothers to go straight. Dad remembers when he was in junior high and seeing a headline in the Bremerton Sun newspaper that read something like “HARKNESS BROTHERS ARRESTED AGAIN.” And I still have living relatives who might not be so happy knowing I’ve given you permission to post this photo. I do it on the grounds that this picture and others are public documents and can be viewed by anyone who searches their names on the Washington State Archives – Digital Archives.