Rita Dove reading poetry at the University of Iowa, March 2, 1976

Speaker 1: The following is a poetry reading recorded March 2nd at the University of Iowa, as part of the 1975, '76 Black Kaleidoscope Eight Series. Rita Dove, a member of the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop is heard reading from her own poetry. Speaker 2: This evening. It is my pleasure to introduce to you Ms Rita dove. Most of you know her as I recognize a number of other poets in the audience, but I will just give you some of a formal background for Ms. Dove. Ms. Dove did her BA in English at Oxford Ohio that's Miami University. She studied at the University of Tubingen in Tubingen West Germany. Speaker 2: She has been a recipient of a number of honors. Teaching, writing fellowship at the University of Iowa, a Research Assistantship at the University of Iowa, a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in Germany to translate modern German poetry. She was a runner up Dan Ford Scholar. She is a Phi Beta Kappa, a National Achievement Scholar, Miami University. She is also a Presidential Scholar. Ms. Dove has published widely, some of her poems Nigger Song: An Odyssey, This Life, Adolescents II in the American Poetry Anthology, Avon Books. Three poems to appear this spring in [Bretagne] published in Brittany France. Adolescents I, Awakenings, And Then Came Flowers, and Exemplar, a magazine which Ms. Dove helped to found. It is a bilingual magazine of German and English. Speaker 2: Adolescents II, Nigger Song: An Odyssey. In [Actinus] Spring 1975, this is in New York, Adolescents III in Prairie Schooner in the Spring of 1973. In addition to being a poet, Ms. Dove has written a play. Dream Rhythms, a play [inaudible] which was performed by the [Kolumba] Players, a Black theater workshop at Miami University. I will not take more of her time. I think Ms. Dove has a complete evening of poetry for us and we'll have to stop. Thank you. Rita Dove: Thank you. It's really good to see so many people I know here. Makes me feel good. I suppose I'll just start right in. First I'll read three poems from a series on Adolescents. The way the series got started it was funny, what happened was, it was about four years ago, I suppose. There was a teacher of mine well, he figured most poets really just wrote about things that were very close to them. And therefore couldn't really express them enough for other people to understand them. And he said, "What you should do is write about things that happened to you at least seven years ago." That was a bit drastic, but I took it literally then and thought, "Wow, seven years ago I was 12. What am I going to do? I mean, there's nothing that was happening when I was 12." Only thing that was happening was adolescence, puberty. So I wrote about that and kept going on it. So I'll read three of the poems out of that series. Okay. Rita Dove: One. In water, heavy nights behind grandmother's porch, we knelt in the tickling grasses and whispered. Linda's face hung before us pale as a pecan. And it grew wise as she said, "A boy's lips are soft, as soft as baby skin." The air closed over her words, a firefly word near my ear and in the distance, I could hear streetlamps ping as they burst into suns against the feathery sky. Rita Dove: Two. Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom waiting, sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby breasts are alert. Venetian blind slice up the moon, the tiles quiver in pale strips. Then they come the three seal men with eyes as round as dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpentines, they bring the scent of licorice. Once sits in the wash bowl, one on the bathtub edge, one leans against the door. "Can you feel it yet?" They whisper. I don't know what to say again. They chuckle patting their sleek bodies with their hands. "Well, maybe next time." And they rise glittering like pools of ink under moonlight and vanish. I clutch at the ragged holes they leave behind here at the edge of darkness. Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue. Rita Dove: Three. With dad gone, mom and I worked the dusky rows of tomatoes as they glowed orange in sunlight and rotted in shadows, I too grew orange and softer swelling out starched cotton slips. The texture of Twilight made me think of lengths of dotted Swiss. In my room, I wrapped scarred knees and dresses that once went to big band dances. I baptized my ear lobes with Rose water. Along the window seal the lipstick stubs glittered in their steel shells. Looking out at the rows of clay and chicken manure. I dreamed how it would happen. He would meet me by the blue spruce, a carnation over his heart saying, "I have come for you, madam. I have loved you in my dreams." At his touch, the scabs would fall away. Over his shoulder, I see my father coming toward us. He carries his tears in a bowl and blood hangs in the pine soaked air. Rita Dove: Okay. The next one is also a older poem and it's a funny one, but it's about things that... you know how you know people who always have to boast, they always have to stretch a story. They always have to have a last word in on anything. And that's what this is all about. It's called The Boast. Rita Dove: At the dinner table before the baked egg plant, you tell the story of your friend, Ira, how he kept a three foot Piranha in his basement. "It was this long." He says, extending your arms. And it was striped with silver scales and blue shadows. The man with purple eyes lifts his eyebrows. You laugh at his joke about the lady in the sausage suit, your toes, find his under the table and he is yours. Evening expires in a yon of stars. But on the walk home, when he pulls you into the hedges and the Black tongues of leaves flatter, and those boogeyman eyes glitter, there won't be time for coming back with lies or flies. Rita Dove: Okay. Next group of poems are, I don't know how you would call them, they're poems about objects. Also poems about people in different walks of life who just don't meet in the university. And I did these mainly as exercises for myself. Also because I feel that in order to even understand myself better and understand my people better, I should fight to understand as much as I can about as many people as I can. And so there are some poems about quote unquote, "stereotypical characters," and this poems about objects. And I'll start off with two poems about objects. And the first one is called Warm. Rita Dove: When I see you, my intestine squirm in recognition, yet the secret of your shoestring activity is lost to me. From you I inherit a love of fruit sellers and the fear of fish. You commune with garden hoses, during summer you find comfort in the cool flesh of tomatoes. Rain drives your family to the sidewalks where their split pink tongues accuse each pedestrian of murder. Rita Dove: The next one is called Faith. Rita Dove: A mocha flower, it grows from its own earth. This alone is creation. This penis swelling in your cup to palms. Between slaked fingers, the stomach grows to the chocolate stem of throat to the final flaring of lip. It is the graven image of a poem whose clay feet are natural. Who stands on a wax table, it's dirt belly stuffed with tulips or peacock feathers. Rita Dove: Okay. Let's see. This is one called The Snow King. I had a friend of mine ask me if this is about cocaine. I wouldn't say. Leave it. The Snow King. Rita Dove: In a far, far land where men are men and women are sun and sky, the snow King paces and light throws a gold patina on the white spaces where sparrows life frozen in hallways. And he weeps for the sparrows, their clumped feathers. Where is the summer that lasts forever? The night is soft as antelope eyes. The snow King roams the lime field spaces, his cracked heart, a slow fire, a Garnet. Rita Dove: Here's one to Zoro, who is one of my favorite characters. I always liked him I think as a child just because he wore Black and he was a hero. I thought that was pretty unique. Zoro. Rita Dove: Zoro, gentleman of dark winds, the child strays from the gypsy band and you putting blade to thigh, lead it back to the donkeys and make tents. To the senior retail with artichoke skirts, you drop down roof to terrace on a night with no moon. I am the little girl home from school with a gift you dropped me, the silver button, who could mistake it? Zoro, the bandits play harmonica that fireside, you will find them. The night is dangerous. The cactus full of owls. You don't give up. The gold smuggler flees through a village of [Zese]. He trips and swish, now it's on him too. There are no more heroes Zoro and the wine is cheap on the table. Come back, leave your sign on the door or slip through the window. Silver eyes behind the good Black mask. Rita Dove: Maybe I'll come back to some of those, but I'll go on. Let's see. Here's one that was sparked by my experiences in Germany. When I was there I realized, well, took awhile, but I did realize after a couple of months that most of the people who were 50 or older, that either the men were all deformed in some way from the war had lost something or else that they were just a preponderance of widows. And it didn't dawn on me for several months. So when it did hit me, I noticed it just that much more, but it's taken awhile for me to even write about anything about the whole experience. But this poem is the only one that came out of it so far. Rita Dove: There's some German words in the poem. Let's see. There's one here called Barmherzkeit, which just means mercy or merciful heavens, just an exclamation. Also the word spaetzle. Spaetzle are a type of noodle that they make in Southern Germany. And that really became popular during the war because it was one of the few things they had to eat. Let's see. And then another one, ein liedchen, kinder, which is an exclamation, just means a small song and children. I think that'll do it. It's called the Bird Frau. Rita Dove: When the boys came home, everything stopped the way he left it. Her apron, the back scares. The sun losing altitude over France as the bird scared up from the fields were wearing curtain, the flack. Barmherzkeit! Her son, her man. She went inside, fed the parakeet, broke its neck. Spaetzle bubbling on the stove. Wind chimes tinkling above the steam, her face in the hall mirror blotted a heart. Let everything go wild, blue jays, crows. She hung suit from branches. The air quick around her head with tiny spastic machinery, starlings finches, her head a crown of feathers. She ate less, grew lighter, air tunneling through bone singing a small song. "Ein Liedchen, Kinder." The children ran away. She moved about the yard like an old rag bird. Still at war, she rose at dawn, watching out for Rudi come home on crutches, the thin legs balancing his atom of life. Rita Dove: Next poem it's called Silences. And I wrote this after really an extremely long writer's block I'd had. I just couldn't write. And finally, I decided I was going to get up one morning at seven o'clock and I hate to get up in the morning, all my friends know that. And I figured if I got up, I'd have to write because I'd be so mad at having to get up that I would write. And this time I had a roommate and I got up and my roommate decided to get up too, though she didn't have to. She got up and she began talking to me as I tried to write and I was just infuriated. And I left the room and went outside, lucky it was spring. And I sat down and wrote a poem about silence, just something I couldn't get. Silences. Rita Dove: I cannot find silence any longer. Behind walls, radios, lift their grating voices, a chair scrapes across the floor above my head and spring sparrows wake me with their chatter and winter snow clumps topple from branches. I go to the doctor. He says, irrigation is the only way to hear pure sounds. I tried to explain that hearing isn't my difficulty, but he floods my ears, first the right then left and tilts my head to drain them. The air roars into my brain. I can hear around corners, the volume, the volume I scream, but his answer is swallowed up by the sound of others' heartbeats, the crashing of air molecules. I rush to the corner drugstore. I stuff two Q-tips in each ear. Now I hear hair sprouting, the trickle of perspiration, the screams between heartbeats. I spent four nights staring into the dark, the sheets crackle around me. I listened to the neighbors' love making. And then I mark the rhythm of their sleep. She breathes in triplets to his quarter beats. I cannot eat. There is the shriek from half-formed chicks when I open an egg, the hearts of tomatoes cry out for my glass. I grow thin, my bones squeak when I walk. Now I lie on a wooden slat and listen to the spaces at the base of my brain that tell me when death is coming, it will be swift. Iron gloves will clamp over my ears. The new quiet will be the sound of pores gently exhaling. Rita Dove: Okay. This next poem, I wrote this poem probably right around in the very beginning of the '70s. After the '60s, which was such a wonderful time, a good time for Black poetry and arise in Black consciousness. I felt that in the '70s, things began to drop off. There was no more time for, or let's say the time was not quite right for protest poetry anymore. There had to be another turn or another direction for poetry to go for minority groups. And I began thinking about this because I was very worried about it. At this time I was just growing up and beginning to write. And I felt that if I wrote things that had been written in the '60, I was only re-writing someone else and it was time for me to do something different. I think a lot of Black writers went through this too, a feeling of now we have protested and now we must begin to write about positive things that are happening in our lives. Rita Dove: And so at this point I addressed it to Donald L. Lee at that time, because I really enjoyed his work. And he had written a poem called seven years ago, which was a poem that said simply, "Seven years ago, if someone had called me Black. I would have stepped on them and talked about their mama and stuff like that." But now he was proud. And I was trying to project what would happen seven years from now where writing would be. And this poem was a meditation on that subject. It's called Upon Meeting Don L. Lee in a Dream. Rita Dove: He comes toward me with lashless eyes, always moving in the yellow half shadows. From his eyes I know he has never made love to thin white boys and toilet stalls. Among the trees, the Black trees, women in robes stand watching. They begin to chant, stamping their feet in wooden cadences as they stretch their beaded arms to him. Moments slip by like worms. Seven years ago he begins, but I cut him off. Those years are gone, what anger is there now? He starts to cry. His eyeballs burst into flame. I can see caviar embedded like bookshop between his teeth. His hair falls out in clumps of burned out wire. The music grows like branches in the wind. I lie down chuckling as the grass curls around me. He can only stand fists, clenched and weep tears of iodine while the singers float away, rustling on brown paper wings. Rita Dove: Thirsty work. This next one was a poem that I wrote for my youngest sister. She grew up reading fairytales and I did too. And I realized, very late when I was in my 16 or 17, suddenly it dawned on me that all of these fairytales about the blue eyed princesses were never going to happen to me. And even though I'm sure that fairytales... everyone suffers that shock when they finally realize that princess do not come quite in the way that Snow White's princess came. For me it was a double shock because it wasn't even that dude going to be around the corner. Rita Dove: So I wanted to help her in some way. And I thought I'd write her a poem to warn her. I couldn't think of any other way. She didn't listen, but I guess everyone has to do it their own way. And she's okay now, but it's called Message to my Youngest Sister. Rita Dove: You are 12. You read Hans Christian Anderson. Your hair is Black and no snow anywhere. Cinderella was Dutch. She loved peaches. Grew them in her cheeks. Boys loved her strudel. Remember you are not their queen. Your hair is greasy. Ain't no princesses no more. You have to take bitters in your old fashions, be the tin soldier. Don't be ashamed of your legs, your ass two cantaloupes, stand tall in someone's Black dream. Rita Dove: Okay. Let's see. I just started on a series of poems about the period right before the civil war. I was reading a lot of slave narratives and things like that. And I realized there's just a wealth of material, things that just had not really been brought to light to a lot of people. And I thought I would start writing a series on these. I'll read two of them tonight. This first one I'm going to read is a prose poem. It doesn't have a title, but it was based on a small factor. I found one narrative where an ex slave had mentioned that on Sundays, the masters had let them out into the field and encourage them to just romp around and have fun rather than to study the Bible or to do anything about religion. And the only thing they learned about religion was that the Lord had made them to serve the white man who was their master on earth. And they were supposed to be subservient. And they were also kept from learning how to read and things like that. So this is a prose poem about this. Rita Dove: It is Sunday, day of rough housing. We are let out in the woods, the young boys wrestle and but their heads together like sheep. A circle forms, claps and shouts fill the air. The women brown and glossy gather around the banjo player, or simply lie in the sun, legs and aprons folded. The weather's an odd monkey. Any other day, he's on our backs, his cotton eye everywhere, today the light sifts down like the finest corn meal, coding our hands and arms with an invisible dust. God's dust or a woman [inaudible] says, "She's the only one could read to us from the Bible before master forbid it." On Sunday, something hangs in the air, a hallelujah, a skitter of breath, but we can't call it by name and it disappears. Then master and his gentlemen friends come to bed on the boys. They guffaw and shout, taking sides, red faced on the edge of the boxing ring. There was more kicking, butting and scuffling. The winner gets a drum of whiskey. If he can drink it all in one swig without choking. Jason is bucking and prancing about master said his name, reminded him of some sailor, a hero who crossed an ocean looking for a golden cotton field. Jason thinks he's been born to great things, a suit with gold threads, vest and all. Now the winner is sprawled out under a tree and the sun that weary tambourine hesitates at the whim of the South. The sky is a light green as it sometimes is before rainstorm. It's a crazy feeling that carries through the night as if the sky was an omen we could not understand, the book that if we could read would change our lives. Rita Dove: The next one is written in three voices. And I think I'll number the parts. The first part is just a general part. Well, let me explain a little bit about it. It's called the transport of slaves from Maryland to Mississippi. And according to an article in the newspaper then, on August 22nd, 1829, a wagon load of slaves had broken their chains, killed two white men and would have escaped had not a slave woman helped the Negro driver mount his horse and ride away for help. And so this is a meditation on that subject. And the first part is a very general omniscient view, perhaps of what happened. The second part is told mostly in the voice of the slave woman who helped the man escape. And the last part is a journalistic quote from a newspaper, The Time. The Transport of Slaves from Maryland to Mississippi. Rita Dove: One. Eight miles South of Portsmouth, the last handcuff broke cleaned from the skin, a chased nutcracker. The last thing Gordon, the Negro driver saw were the trees erect his broccoli before he was clubbed from behind. 60 slaves poured off the wagon, smelly half numb, free. Baggage man, petite rushed in with his whip. Some niggers laid on another one's leg he thought before he saw they were loose. "Hold it." He yelled, but not even the winches stopped. To his right Atkins dropped under a crown of clubs. They didn't even flinch. "Wait, you ain't supposed to act this way." Rita Dove: Two. I don't know if I helped him up because I thought he was our salvation or our death. Left for dead in the middle of the road. Dust hovering around the body like a screen of mosquitoes shimmering in the hushed light. The skin across his cheekbones had burst open like big gums. Deliberate, the eyelids came apart. His eyes were my eyes in a yellower face. Death and salvation, one accommodates the other. I am no brute. I got feelings. He might've been a son of mine. Rita Dove: Three. The Negro Gordon barely escaping with his life rode into the plantation just as his pursuer came into sight. The neighborhood was rallied and a search began. Some of the Negroes had taken to the woods. The entire gang has been captured. This most shocking, affray and murder will be brought to top trial next court in Greenapsburg. Rita Dove: Take a little work here. Next part are mostly love poems. Most of them unsuccessful love poems, but anyway, or should I say unsuccessful love events that are portrayed in the poems. But it's so hard to write about anything that's happy even when it happens that you have to do this. And the first one is called Nightwatch. Rita Dove: In this stucco house, there Is nothing but air. The Mexican sky shivers toward morning. I am on the four star vacation from the wings of man to these halls, draped and heavy matting where lizards hang from light fixtures. From an invisible courtyard comes the broken applause of casting nets. Romance may lurk in the land of white orchids, but no slim hip Latin comes for me. Coded servants, guttural through the halls. I hear the morning wind around the house as the light goes out to the shanties in the mountains. Rita Dove: Next one is in two parts. Awakenings. Rita Dove: One. I wake from a dream of lizards to see your head against the pillow. I walk to the window where the view is drizzled over by a February rain. My breasts pier out like twin brown eyes and I hope for a moment longer. Sound of your breathing slides down my back like sweaty palms Rita Dove: Two. I go home easing the key into the lock and walking on tiptoe through the darkened rooms, shadows carved the curve of orange crepe and brown arm as I pull bracelets from my wrists. Poems of fists and chains have no echoes now. And I lay the pages down beside the Afro wig and the hairpins. Rita Dove: Okay. Next one's happy. Title is A Secret Garden and it's based on quite a few secret gardens. First of all, there is a Middle East book called The Secret Garden, which has quite a few... well, I don't want to say pornography, but sex stories and references. Then there is also a children's book called The Secret Garden, which is really delightful that I also had in mind. And what really sparked the poem was a book called My Secret Garden, which was put out by Nancy Friday. And it's a book on women's sexual fantasies. And I think I was reading it at the time that I decided to write the poem. It's called The Secret Garden. Rita Dove: I was ill lying on my bed of old papers when you came with white rabbits in your arms and the doves scattered upwards, crying to mothers and the snails side under their baggage of stone. Now your tongue grows like celery between us because of our love cries, cabbage darken in their nests. The cauliflower thinks of her pale plump children and turns greenish white in a light like the oceans. I was sick, fainting in the smell of teabags when you came with tomatoes, a good blood poetry. I am being wooed. I am being conquered. You're a cliff of limestone leaving chock on my breasts. Rita Dove: Okay. This one is called Then Came Flowers. Rita Dove: I should have known if you gave me flowers, they would be electric chrysanthemums. The white spikes singed my fingers. I cried out. They spilled from the green tissue and spread at my feet in a pool of soft fire. You were angry and reached for your jacket. Couldn't I learn to be more graceful. I thought of my sister who reads fairytales. She too believes nothing in elegant. She wouldn't believe in electric chrysanthemums. If I begged you to stay, what good would it do me? In the bed, you would lay the flowers between us. I will pick them up later, arrange them with pincers, all night from the Bureau they'll watch me. Their plumage is proud, as cocky as firecrackers. Rita Dove: You're all real quiet out there. Okay. This poem well, it was sparked by Japanese Noh play that I was reading at the time. Is a Noh play called The Damask Drum. And just to go gloss through it very quickly, because there was a reference to this damask drum in there. It's a story of an old man, 70 or 80 falls in love with a very young woman that he sees across the street. And he nurtures his love for a hundred days. He's written a letter to her every day. She never gets any of the letters. Finally, at the end, she does get a letter and she thinks it's very funny that he has a crush on her and decides to play a joke on him. Rita Dove: And so she sends back with the message, "You're a little drum made out of Damask," which of course doesn't make any sound because of the material. And she told him that if he would play this drum and beat this drum, when she heard the tones of the drum, she would come to him and give him a kiss. And he was so excited that he ran out that night. He began to beat the drum and there was no sound and he died of a broken heart. And then there's a little coda where his ghost comes back and talks to her and he beats the drum again. And this time everyone can hear it except for her, she still can't hear it because her heart is so hard. But there is a reference to that drum in the poem. And this poem is called, To an Old Professor at Brunch. [inaudible] wait a minute now, this is not funny. Rita Dove: It has nothing to do with your mouth silver filled or the books fallen peacocks on the shelves. The melon burns in white wine. Do you see the terrace, miraculous hung in light? Do you see the sugar tongues merciful jaws? There was no night before. Under railings lie the sinewy streets, the names are secrets and we do not know them. Alleys paved in gray baby teeth. The razor red roves, we do not know them. I don't know what to do about us. It grows amongst sheep in the midst of nowhere. You give me blue dragons behind spectacles, Cherry Schnapps, and no night before. We walk in a canyon under Eagle's nests, under sky's too much for both of us. Take the Damask Drum from the bush and beat it. Only I will hear the thrill tones caught by rock and hurled back violent. Rita Dove: Okay. This Life. The green lamp flares on the table. You tell me the same thing as that one asleep upstairs. Now I see the possibilities are golden dresses in a nutshell. As a child, I fell in love with a Japanese woodcut of a girl gazing at the moon. I waited with her for her lover. He came in white breaches and sandals. He had a goatee. He had your face though I didn't know it. Our lives will be the same. Your lips swollen from whistling at danger and I a stranger in this desert, nursing the tough skins of figs. Rita Dove: I'll read you two more like sets things. The first one is a suite of six poems that are called A Suite for Augustus. Suite was actually sparked by [Stanley Tommy's] [inaudible] class, but it has a lot to do I think with about what it means to be Black in America in 1976. This bicentennial going on all over the place. Well, really there are two people in the poems. There is a man called Augustus who was politically active, a Black man, politically active. And then the poet or the speaker of the poems. I'll just read them straight through. They all have titles. Rita Dove: 1963. That winter I stopped loving the president and loved his dying. He smiled from his frame on the chifferobe and watched us arraigned in each day, using buttons for rosary beads. Then tap water rinsed orange through my underwear. He moved away and in tall, white buildings type speeches, each word cluster a satellite, a stone cherry that arched over the violent Bay, broadcasting ballgames and goodwill to Cuba. But to me, stretched out under prequel, the cherry blink sadly, goodbye, goodbye, spinning into space. In this Black place, I touched the doorknobs of my knees begging to open me an erector set, spilled and unpuzzled. Rita Dove: This is in three parts, Not Wide. Rita Dove: One. Roosters, corn, wooden dentures, pins and thimbles, embroidery hoops, snuff and silver, greenbacks in garages. Latinate truth, jingles and purses, Brontosaurus bones couch on Smithsonian velvet Rita Dove: Two. A bloodless finger pointing to heaven you say is surely no more impossible than this city. A no man's land. A capitalist skew, a postcard framed by imported blossoms. And now this outrageous cue stick lying reflected on a Black table. Rita Dove: Three. Leaving his chair under the giant knee cap, he prowls the edge of the prune Black water. Down the lane of clip trees, a ghost trio plays Dixie. His slaves have outlived him in this life too. Harmonicas breathe in, the gray palms clap, the broomsticks jumped, the world's not wide. Rita Dove: Planning The perfect evening. I keep him waiting. Tucking the curtains, buff my nails, such small pink egg shells. As if for the last time I descend the stare. He stands penguin stiff in a room that's so quiet, we forget it is there. Now nothing, not even breath can come between us, not even the aroma of punch and sneakers as we dance the length of the gymnasium and crate paper streams down like cartoon lightning. Oh, Augustus, where did you learn to Samba? And what is that lump below your cummerbund? Rita Dove: Stardust. The band folds up resolutely with plum dark faces. The night still chirps. 16 cars, caravan to Georgia for a terrace, beer and tacos. Even this far South, the thin blue ice shackles the moon and I'm happy my glass sizzles with stars. How far away the world and how hulking you are my dear, my sweet black bear. Rita Dove: Augustus Observes the Sunset. Home for the holidays. Everything's bicentennial, ketchup, marshmallows, the tub of ice, bacon strips floating in Star Spangled soup. The sun like a dragon spreading its tail burns the blue air to ribbons. This July, the yard is tighter and the neighbor's kids never grow up. Picnic tables block the drive you never use anyway, but eastward, the corn swelling in it sockets, a wall of silence growing. What are you doing in your own backyard holding your coat in your arms like a rabbit? There's so much left to do, you pack. Above spare ribs and snow puff potatoes, the sky shakes like a flag, Rita Dove: Wake. Stranded in the middle of the nation like this, I turn eastward following rivers. My heart shy, mulatto wanders toward the south-edged contours of rock and sand that stretch your head into darkness. But you stand in the way. A young boy appearing at the bank of the Potomac profile turned to sudden metal and your shirt front luminous under a thicket of cherry boughs. You open your mouth as if to say, "Tadpoles, pebbles," each word, a droplet of Creme de Menthe. What reaches me is not your words, but your breath, exalted in spearmint. Rita Dove: Back. Three years too late. I'm scholarship to Europe and back. Four years, a language later and your 39th jet lands in Kuwait. Down through columns of khaki and ribbons escorted at night by the radiance of oil fields, you relax at last. Goat milk and scotch, no women, no maple trees. You think, "How far I've come?" This barnstorming that led no closer to you has stuffed my knees into violets, buried me in the Emerald hearts of leaves. They are like 20 mark bills, soft dollars. They bring me back. Rita Dove: And I think I'll close them with what is really my favorite poem, whether you like it or not. It's called Nigger Song: An Odyssey. Rita Dove: We six pile in, the engine turning ink. We ride into the night, past factories, past graveyards and the broken eyes of windows. We ride into the gray green nigger night. We sweep past excavation sites, the pits of gravel gleam like mounds of ice. Weeds clutch at the wheels. We laugh and swerve away, varying into the Black end trails of the earth. The green smoke sizzling on our tongues. In the nigger night, thick with the smell of cabbages, nothing can catch us. Laughter spills like Gin from glasses and yeah, we whisper. Yeah, we croon. Yeah. Thank you.