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Clifford Etienne Would Like to Paint You a Picture

The messages arrive at all hours, with the same email subject line: JPay Services—New Incoming Mail. For stretches, they land with weekly regularity; other times, months pass without any correspondence. They’ve all been sent from the same place, a small room deep inside a prison in the swamps of Louisiana. And they’ve all been typed out by the same inmate, locked up for a cocaine-fueled crime spree.

These letters, they're a fast-moving, mostly lucid commentary on the past few years in the U.S., sports and beyond. From the rise of Bills quarterback Josh Allen (the sender writes: “he could put together a HALL OF FAME career”) to the in-ring success of Ukrainian boxer Vasiliy Lomachenko (“f--- however hard he might punch”) to the upcoming Mike Tyson–Roy Jones Jr.