Poetry

My mother’s given up on her dream
of a brand new house. What’s wrong
with what we’ve got, my father doesn’t
say, exactly. “Go ahead” is what he says,

The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass
and in the slave quarters there is a rustling—
children are bundled into aprons, cornbread

Waking one morning
we cannot find
Kate or Wesley,
or his cows and sheep,

Those in the parlors reading the still stories, the slow stories
Look out the window, then read, then look out slowly.

Herculasses, a feminine fauna.
Naked as the crashing of barrels.
Cooped up on top of trampled beds.

has a name of her own, you know. So?
So ask her what in tarnation she thinks
she’s doing here among the bathers, nudes
reclining, torsos of Venus, costumed odalisques

It is night. I feel it is night
not because darkness has fallen
(what do I care about darkness falling)
but because down in myself the shouting
has stopped, has given up.