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Praise for {#289-128}

“Randall Horton’s fourth book moves brilliantly from the confines of a prison cell to the expanse of New York City. As ‘state poet #289-128,’ Horton vividly evokes the dehumanizing experience of prison and the system that enables it. Racial awareness is implicit: ‘skin color / is a race that never stops running,’ and prison remains a presence even when the poet is free to ride the subway and chronicle a vibrant array of urban lives. ‘Poems need to bite,’ he says, and these poems do.”—Martha Collins, author of Because What Else Could I Do

“There is something about trauma that poetry alone can speak to: it can distill pain and wrench something beautiful from it. Horton’s stunning work does just this, laying bare the dehumanizing horrors of prison and transforming them into gorgeous art.”—Baz Dreisinger, founding director of the Prison-to-College Pipeline program at City University of New York and author of Incarceration Nations

“How easy it is for me to salute inmate #289-128. Perhaps I’m in the visitor’s chair imploring to our protagonist why we must endure it all—why the darkness, the case, the ‘story of survival no one survives’ might be worth it all in the end. How we got here, we kind of know how this happens. But what we must undertake is a gruesome, soul-snatching, bluescollecting, head-to-toe humanity-stripping kind of testifying. How we’ll end up, we kind of know—but what’s for sure is that Randall Horton is my favorite poet. And his words are my favorite reminder. And this secular preaching is the kind of gospel that makes Etheridge and the underworld gods proud.”—Derrick Harriell, author of Cotton and Ropes

“Horton serves as a cicerone to life behind the walls, guiding us with clear eyes through the cell and the yard, through the mess hall and tiers. He also proves himself a sage, revealing knowing truths about the humans we feed into a carnivorous American carceral system: their doubts and hopes, their wounds, their searches for healing…. A necessary voice in these troubled times.”—Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math

“Horton turns his gift of musical language toward the contemplative, and we find a world larger than our imaginations. It’s hyperreal; it’s magical; it’s filled with solitude, communion, and truth; but, even more surprising, it’s a world behind bars that’s all around us. We’ve just ignored it…. {#289-128} also teaches us about relationships during a time when we’re paying more attention to both how we talk to one another and, as a result, how we love.”—A. Van Jordan, author of The Cineaste

“Horton’s work is urgent and sensitive. With attention to detail and generosity, he forces us to confront the everyday brutality of the criminal punishment bureaucracy. We must open our hearts and minds to the images he offers us, and then we must dismantle the system.”—Alec Kara-katsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps and author of Usual Cruelty

“Horton sketches a face of incarceration that, as the system wills it, appears interchangeable and dismissible to the public eye. But in these pages his collectivized voice becomes a form of power, a force impossible to ignore…. Horton’s true gift lies in the refusal of neat packaging, in questioning both the possibility and failures of language, routinely turning poetry on its axis to examine: can craft appropriately hold the sheer violence of incarceration? Horton’s book is at once a landmine of nuance, and a strong medicine against our country’s most oppressive and horrific systems.”—Caits Meissner, PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program Director

“A powerfully evocative collection…. To question the story of incarceration is to question the ways in which we too are held captive within coded spaces and social contracts, ‘trapped / in a maze of identity & boundaries.’ Horton’s undaunted lyricism shatters this hall of mirrors with a voice transcendent, challenging us to uncover a deeper empathy within and without bounds, where ‘the voiceless are alive, too.’”—Monica Ong, author of Silent Anatomies

“This book is not a literati ‘been there’ selfie; not a cred advertisement. It is not even simply accurate, authentic witness. Take that with the fact that this work is masterfully accomplished and skilled writing, and it becomes clear that {#289-128} is the real deal.”—Ed Roberson, author of To See the Earth Before the End of the World

“Horton, who was himself ‘property of the state,’ writes about ‘the slow fatality of imprisonment’ with searing insight. These are his trials, his Passion—a word whose root means suffering. This is a must-read voice for our time ‘screaming in a dark ocean’; a voice for all times that reminds us how much is lost when we confine a person’s humanity to a number.” —Lucinda Roy, author of Fabric: Poems and The Dreambird Chronicles

“A powerful, bristling, innovative serial poem from the carceral state, the beating heart of a brilliant poet’s life inside. This is life as a number, a routine, but with razor perception, elegant stride, and heightened observation of the human…. An essential book of poetry of this time, right now…. This book is a goad to keep by your side as the world awakens to understand its penal tragedies and advocates a visionary change.”—Anne Waldman, author of Trickster Feminism and chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets