One photograph on file Buy X

Prison Dog

Prison Dog photographed against the height chart
The photograph

One bad day, one photograph, and now it is the only picture of me that anybody has.

The measuring wall
Contractsoon
How it went

It was taken in about four seconds

Bad light, flash straight into the face, told to stand still and look ahead. Nobody was trying to make it a nice picture, and nobody warned me it would be the one that lasted.

Everybody here has one
Trays keep it separated
Forty minutes at a time
Where it has turned up since

I stopped counting in the second year

Local news, twice, both times croppedPrint
A group chat I am not inForwarded
Printed on a shirt, worn past meMerchandise
A poster in a shop window, uncreditedDisplay
Somebody's profile picture, still nowOngoing
I offered them alternatives

These are the two I had

I asked whether they wanted a different picture. They said yes, send one over. I sent these. They went back to the first one and have used it ever since.

Eyes closedRejected
Half out of frameRejected
The part nobody asks about

Out here no photographs are taken

Which is most of why I come. An hour with nothing pointed at me, and for that hour I am not a picture of anything.

The exercise yard