MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Finally today, we are going to end on a poem. Throughout the month of April, we celebrated National Poetry Month, as we do each year, by inviting listeners to send us their original poems on Twitter using the hashtag #nprpoetry.

Well, we know it's May, but this week, we received a submission we wanted to highlight anyway. It only got to us now because it was sent through the mail from somebody who does not have access to the Internet or Twitter. It came from Jose Carlos Grant, who is currently in prison at the Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown, Calif. So for our final poem in this year's NPR Poetry series, here is the work of Jose Carlos Grant.

(Reading) Compunction, contrition, remorse, regret, forgiveness, lament - so much sorrow, so much pain, so I'll say it again. I'm sorry. I'm trying to make amends.

(SOUNDBITE OF SEAN HAYES SONG, "SMOKING SIGNALS")

MARTIN: That was Jose Carlos Grant. He is incarcerated in Jamestown, Calif.

(SOUNDBITE OF SEAN HAYES SONG, "SMOKING SIGNALS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.