Celebrate National Poetry Month with us and enjoy a Poetry Per Diem each day for the month of April!
Today’s poem is from Marilyn Nelson’s book of poems titled Fortune’s Bones.
Dinah’s Lament
Miss Lydia doesn’t clean the Doctor room.
She say she can’t go in that room: she scared.
She make me take the dust rag and the broom
and clean around my husband, hanging there.
Since she seen Fortune head in that big pot
Miss Lydia say that room make her feel ill,
sick with the thought of boiling human broth.
I wonder how she think it make me feel?
To dust the hands what use to stroke my breast;
to dust the arms what hold me when I cried;
to dust where his soft lips were, and his chest
what curved its warm against my back at night.
Through every season, sun-up to star light,
I heft, scrub, knead: one black woman alone,
except for my children. The world so white,
nobody know my pain, but Fortune bones.
This book can be found in the Island Free Library
collection, upstairs under call number 811.54 NEL.
Stay tuned for another poem tomorrow!