Coal City

Antonio SANCHEZ-DAY
Life
Life means various things to different people. Life means
something different to me now than it did 5, 10, 15 years ago . . .
Today, life to me is first and foremost a gift. This very
day, this very moment as I write these words is a gift, a blessing
given to me by my creator. A gift that is to be cherished and treated
with love, and kindness.
I view life today as something new, so the wonder of life is always
present.
I create in my life with joy and abandon, without concern for what
others think about my creation. Today I know I have
the choice of creating hell in my life, or creating beauty and
peace. I wake up and am stunned by the beauty of the day be it
rain, snow, or sunshine. I drink the morning water, life itself and
give thanks. I view the given day as a challenge and an opportunity.
A challenge to face whatever situations present themselves to me.
Challenges are neither good nor bad, neither a curse nor
blessing. They are only what we make of them, depending on what
meaning we assign them. The assigned meaning does not alter
the content of the situation. Our perception gives the assigned
meaning.
Today I choose to view all challenges as an opportunity. An
opportunity to be impeccable. To act to the very best of my ability
upon whatever knowledge happens to be available to me at any
given moment. To live this life with the knowledge that every
moment, every act matters. To understand that to believe I have
all the time in the world is not only foolish, but also takes
away from the appreciation of life. Today I savor life to
the fullest, and enjoy every moment of this precious time
on this red road. Today I don’t need anything or want
for nothing but to be happy and to live an impeccable life.
Needing and wanting to have something is just an expression
of the egotistical desires of my mind’s programming and has
nothing to do with my spiritual path.
Today my life is the expression of the beauty of my

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spirit and the Great Spirit. I was once told that life is nothing but a
dream, and if I create my life with love, my dream will
become a masterpiece of art. This is the power of life.
The power of life is inside all of us.

Brian DALDORPH
Anthony Sanchez-Day (July 21, 1974-
March 5, 2021)
Before leaving the Dance Ground Cemetery on the Potawatomi
reservation in Mayetta, Kansas, I put the flowers my daughter had
given me for Antonio Sanchez-Day on his grave and said goodbye
to my friend. As I walked back to my car, I looked around at the
Kansas prairie in early spring, glad that Antonio was in a peaceful
place at last. He’d been taking on life, as he’d say, for 46 years. He
was tired of fighting all those demons within and without. March
2021: time for him to sleep.
I first met Antonio in 2013 at Douglas County Jail in Lawrence,

Kansas, when he filed into the classroom at the tail end of a proces-
sion of orange jump-suited inmates. By that point, I’d been teach-
ing a Creative Writing class at the jail for over a decade. Every

Thursday afternoon, I’d watch as the classroom filled with inmates
who took their places in the class circle. For some, writing class
meant a welcome couple of hours out of their cells. However, a
lot of inmates who joined the class came to like their two hours
together in the classroom, writing, telling stories, sharing jokes.
Hey, if it lifted weary spirits who were in a bad place, then that was

a good thing, right? Might even be an opportunity to get some seri-
ous writing done.

At first, I didn’t pick out Antonio from the rest of the inmates
in the class. Some inmates come to class and make a big splash:

they’d arrive with a poem or rap ready for us, happy to have an au-
dience. They’d do their thing, and if it was good, they’d hear, Hey,

that’s what’s up, and, There it is. You got that, brother.

But Antonio wasn’t like that. Antonio–owl-faced and shaven-
headed, with a distinctive tattoo, Delores, on his neck–was watch-
ful. He’d sit back and listen to what everybody else had to say

before sharing his work, most often a neatly-written page that he’d
later tell me was written and rewritten until it was exactly right. He
said he had all the time he needed in his cell for that.

One of the first poems he read in class was “Penitentiary Proto-
col,” written, he said, for this cocky young guy he’d met who was

going to prison for the first time and who claimed that doing time
was nothing much. Antonio wanted him to know that prison was
menace and blood:

When you arrive, read the sign: “Leave all hopes
And dreams behind.” Forget all you have or had
In the free world, it no longer matters . . . Learn to like the
sight
And smell of blood, it surrounds you. Prepare to witness
The evil men do.

In 2013, when he first read that poem to us, Antonio was in Doug-
las County Jail waiting for his case to be heard. He knew that he’d

have to go back to prison, and he began telling the class that he
was going to do his prison time differently. He’d had enough time
behind the walls.
In fact, he was sentenced to two more years in prison. Back in
prison, he made monumental changes to his life, just as he’d told
us he would. He told the leaders of his gang that he wanted to be
placed on “inactive” status. “Inactive” in gang business, he served
his time working on his poetry, getting in touch with his Native

American roots and religion, exploring the rich literature of His-
panic writers, and following the example of his main man, Jimmy

Santiago Baca, himself a former convict, but now one of the major
voices in American poetry.
During this prison “bid” (as he’d call it), he had to deal with
temporary blindness, a condition caused by his diabetes. If you
want to know about fear, then try thinking of being blind in prison

with how many enemies lurking? Fortunately, two emergency op-
erations restored his sight.

I met Antonio again in 2015 when he was released and moved
to Lawrence after a stint in Oxford House (a homeless shelter) in
Topeka. He was determined to carry on changing his life for the
better. He wanted to work, if possible, though he had serious health
issues, including diabetes and kidney and heart troubles. But mostly
he wanted to write, and that’s what he did. He wrote and wrote,
working on a first book.
He also returned to the writing class circle in Douglas County
Jail where he’d started his odyssey of self-recovery, but this time
as an instructor, the only former inmate allowed back into the class.
He’d sit in the circle again and tell inmates his story. How he’d
been bullied at school as the only Native/Hispanic kid in his class.
How he’d joined a gang which seemed like family. How he’d
gotten involved in a street fight and hurt someone badly: the judge
had sentenced him to ten years, a tough sentence meant to show
other gang members that they’d be harshly dealt with in Lawrence,
Kansas.

I’d been teaching the class for almost 15 years when Antonio
joined me as a co-instructor, but I couldn’t reach the inmates in the
same way Antonio could. “I’ve sat where you’re sitting,” he’d say.
“If I can do it then anyone can. I’m just one bad decision away
from being right back in trouble again.”
During that time, Antonio joined the Kansas Authors Club and
met other writers who encouraged him, telling him that he had a
special talent and he should work on it. We listened to his poems
and were drawn into the worlds he created, like the one about the
man in the library who meets a former version of himself, or the one
about how he and his friend stood back to back and fought against
enemies gathered around like wolves, or the one about the best little
dog ever, Chuey the chihuahua, Antonio’s “wing-man.”
In October 2019, I drove with Antonio down to Wichita where

he was giving a presentation at the Kansas Authors Club conven-
tion. He stood in front of the audience looking like a million dollars

in his smart blue suit and Paris Left Bank beret and told them about
his writing, how it had saved him and how he woke every morning
thanking his gods for this gift. After his presentation, a tall guy-
-upright, ex-military, it seemed–came up to talk to him, said he’d
been a cop for thirty years and that what Antonio had been talking
about—the trauma of violence–was happening on the other side of
the line too, for ex-cops. Though they’d been on opposite sides of
the law, they could respect each other.
In 2017, I interviewed Antonio for a book about the jail class.
I asked him what he’d be doing in 10 years’ time, would he still be
writing? He said he definitely would be, he had so much more to
write. He told me that he wanted to write more about his mother,
Delores, who had been a huge influence on his life.
But what we didn’t know then, but maybe should have seen,
was that his time was running short. By that point, he was going in
for dialysis three times a week, which deeply tired him each time.
Then, there was the triple bypass surgery. In early 2021, Antonio
had just gotten himself a dog called Scooby to love, when more bad

news came from the hospital: he was on the verge of total liver fail-
ure and, if that happened, he’d only have weeks left to live. When

I heard this, I couldn’t help thinking that this fighter would come
through. He’d been fighting demons all his life: surely he’d fight
them off one more time.
On a Sunday morning in early March 2021, I saw a Facebook
post that Anthony Sanchez-Day had died at KU Med in Kansas City,
written by his aunt. I checked around, willing it not to be true. But
it was. Antonio Sanchez-Day RIP.

I drove to his funeral in Hoyt, Kansas, north of Topeka, at the
Chapel Oaks Funeral Home, with two other jail class teachers; all
of us had loved and respected our colleague and friend, Antonio
Sanchez-Day. We met his family for the first time and saw how
much he was loved, how much we were all grieving. After a short
Catholic service, we formed a procession in our cars and drove on
backroads through Indian Country to the cemetery. Antonio’s ashes
were buried next to his father’s grave.
I think of Antonio during those last five or six years–out of
prison, a free man, a respected man, a man who sat with judges
and police chiefs on the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and
gave his advice about the criminal justice system from the inside. I
think of the brilliant poems that illuminated experiences that most
of us would never have, and yet they reached us all. I think of his
magnificent first book of poetry, Taking on Life.
And I grieve for my friend because there should have been so
much more. As he wrote:
Raindrops of sadness wash away the pain
help me forget as I dance in the rain . . .

Antonio SANCHEZ-DAY
One Final Letter
A man and woman create a circle when they
are in love,
breaking the circle, one leaves out to utter
black space,
the other slowly watching the energy dim,
crumbling, and the circle like a disc
swirls maddeningly through space, an outer-space craft
that will, when it lands, leave gaping craters
smoldering in green grass.
Those craters are the footsteps
of lovers apart.
I am trying to say
if you want to be with me, be with me,
if you don’t then don’t—
if the latter is true, don’t let these poems flatter you
they are intended for more than flattery,
they are birth poems of love from me to you,
from my abdomen, full of blood, fear, love, guilt,
devotion.
Do not love me, do not commit yourself to me,
do not honor me with your heart
if you secretly don’t intend to, if you don’t want to.
I must move on, to fall in love with trees,
cathedral bells, soft evenings, snowy mountains,
cafes, books, music.
Start your life,
create your environment where you flourish,
where your gifts
become fire to the kindling in drought-stricken souls;
become the woman you desire.
What good is love if you desire another
between us,
what good is love if you flirt with others,
what good is love if you do not surrender yourself
to your lover
as I would to you, fully and totally, with complete

honesty and commitment,
your knees, your breasts, your lips, your voice,
the only reason I love them is because of the
soul-energy that fills them.
Your heart and soul
are like the rarest of turquoise jungle birds,
fit only for warrior hearts,
which I have, which I live with and which I
offer you.
Tonight I wish I could dine with you,
candlelight and wine,
low talk, listening to you tell me things,
teach me of your soul and dreams.
Tonight I wish I could go to a movie
and hold your hand,
whisper my thoughts to you.
Tonight we could walk, we could drive
to the lake and tell each other
our fondest wishes and most coveted dreams
and what you shared with me I would cherish,
hold close to my heart like a young boy
with a flame in each hand
to lead him through the dark.
You must understand, leave or stay, but know
I believe and have tremendous faith
that if you flung fear away, if you
truly loved me, you’d tell the world
of your love, conceal nothing,
and I in turn would do the same
I would never let you down.
Tonight it is late and I’m alone again,
I see you stepping out of a cab,
I see you camping at the lake and
telling me your feelings,
I see your heart
when I look at the moon,
I see your smile when I see
the hummingbird of the lilac bush,

I see your soul
when I inhale the air
that allows me to live,
I feel you in me,
feel myself in you
feel the throbbing, the panting, the crying
the embrace.
I see you walking down black steps in a
white skirt,
I see you in a gallery holding a brochure,
viewing paintings,
I see you studying the woman’s face
in a painting.
I see a man flirting with you.
I see you flirt back.
I see you go with a man in a bar.
I see you desiring another man
and I see myself vanish into the smoky
steam of a dark street
never to return.
I lose myself in a bookstore,
I lose myself in a busy street with jazz clubs,
in a studio recording poetry with musicians
in Lawrence
but vanishing from your life
the way a dormant volcano awakens with
red roaring
to love fully
coagulating into black lava rock that will
remain like scabs covering the green grass
that could have been
beneath its black sharp scales of hardened lava crust.
There is no jealousy in me, just a need
for truth,
as I meditate on life more and more,
I need truth,
and I need love, lasting love.