Pandora's Box

When I sat with Kwame Dawes on a gorgeous Nebraska football morning in October 2017 to discuss guest editing a portfolio for Prairie Schooner, I did not realize the enormity of my task. Two topics had possessed me then: the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) situation that might force many "Dreamers" to leave the country and the escalating opioid epidemic.

The Dreamers issue seemed easy for me. My doctoral studies had been in Hispanic culture and literature. I felt I had an entrance into the Dreamer Latinx students who had come here as children and believed in a future in North America. Some of my own family spoke Spanish at home. In the past, I had led bilingual workshops, and I felt hopeful that I could gather poems from students. We were just beginning to hear of their parents' deportations.

The opioid crisis offered another story. I knew relatively little about it but enough to know that it was a major crisis. Kwame listened as I made the choice to take on this more challenging issue: the opioid epidemic.

I sent out calls for poems to old Nebraska standbys. Poets I loved wrote, "Blessedly, this issue has not touched my life. You are doing important work. Good luck." Poets sent me good luck but not good poems, or any poems. I wrote to Ashley at Prairie Schooner and begged for a deadline extension. I could not stand to let go of this tragic situation.

I knew from Centers for Disease Control statistics that the catastrophe had killed 64,000 people in 2016 and that the nation's male life expectancy had fallen for two years in a row. I hoped to investigate and ignite a literary response to this epidemic that was destroying our country like a terrorist. I also prayed to raise an alarm in the hearts of legislators who might move to criminalize the manufacture of illicit opioids.

Overdose victims are mostly white and Native American. Some in the medical community speculate that doctors are less likely to prescribe these drugs to black patients because of earlier drug abuse stereotypes. Many addicts begin as patients in pain. A 2013 survey indicated that 74 percent of opioid abusers acquired their drugs—OxyContin primarily—directly from a doctor's prescription after an accident or surgery. Addicted to the buzz and yearning for release from pain, patients may turn to street drugs like heroin or fentanyl when the medical prescription runs out. That transition can come at a dear cost: losing friends, family, and finally, in the worst case, life.

In my area the number of deaths was mounting, and yet I felt removed from the epidemic. Our newspaper announced the availability of a needle exchange in the parking lot of one of our hospitals. A parking lot? Not even inside the hospital? I had held poetry workshops in prisons and hospitals. Why not hold sessions in parking lots where people could write about their pain?

I talked to our contributors Michael Harris and Ray Murphy about physical and mental pain as a genesis of addiction. Where was so much pain coming from? That is a question I am still asking. Some of our poets address it. In a letter Ray Murphy wrote, "Virtually all of my writing about opiates stems from writing about injury. I never address opiates as a recreational drug. Be interesting to see how many other submissions you get that come out of injury and pain, and then progress into dependency and possibly full-blown addiction. Opiates are at once remarkably versatile and one-dimensional. There is no end to the topic." Yes, I feel that opiate addicts are like canaries in the coal mine, as the addicts are the indicators in our society of the pain we are suffering. In a previous century, addiction to drugs like laudanum may have been connected to mystical vision, as R. T. Smith conjures in his narrative, "Sergeant-Major Perry on Sullivan's Island."

In a sense, existing as an addict indicates a willingness to experience danger without fear of death. It deeply saddened me to receive pieces from mothers...