Monument

Poems New and Selected

Natasha Trethewey

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781328508690
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Urgent new poems on race and gender inequality, and select poems drawing upon Domestic Work, Bellocq's Ophelia, Native Guard, Congregation, and Thrall, from two-time U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey. Layering joy and urgent defiance—against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone—Trethewey's work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. Monument, Trethewey's first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, and Gulf coast victims of Katrina. Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet's own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love. In this setting, each poem drawn from an "opus of classics both elegant and necessary, "* weaves and interlocks with those that come before and those that follow. As a whole, Monument casts new light on the trauma of our national wounds, our shared history. This is a poet's remarkable labor to source evidence, persistence, and strength from the past in order to change the very foundation of the vocabulary we use to speak about race, gender, and our collective future. *Academy of American Poets' chancellor Marilyn Nelson "[Trethewey's poems] dig beneath the surface of history—personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago—to explore the human struggles that we all face." —James H. Billington, 13th Librarian of Congress

Domestic Work

FOR LERETTA DIXON TURNBOUGH (LEE)
JUNE 22, 1916–JULY 28, 2008

 

 

I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving.

—W.E.B. Du Bois

 

 

1. Domestic Work, 1937

All week she’s cleaned

someone else’s house,

stared down her own face

in the shine of copper-

bottomed pots, polished

wood, toilets she’d pull

the lid to—that look saying

 

Let’s make a change, girl.

 

But Sunday mornings are hers—

church clothes starched

and hanging, a record spinning

on the console, the whole house

dancing. She raises the shades,

washes the rooms in light,

buckets of water, Octagon soap.

 

Cleanliness is next to godliness . . .

 

Windows and doors flung wide,

curtains two-stepping

forward and back, neck bones

bumping in the pot, a choir

of clothes clapping on the line.

 

Nearer my God to Thee . . .

 

She beats time on the rugs,

blows dust from the broom

like dandelion spores, each one

a wish for something better.

2. Speculation, 1939

 

First, the moles on each hand—

That’s money by the pan—

 

and always the New Year’s cabbage

and black-eyed peas. Now this,

another remembered adage,

her palms itching with promise,

 

she swears by the signs—Money coming soon.

But from where? Her left-eye twitch

says she’ll see the boon.

Good—she’s tired of the elevator switch,

 

those closed-in spaces, white men’s

sideways stares. Nothing but

time to think, make plans

each time the doors slide shut.

 

What’s to be gained from this New Deal?

Something finer like beauty school

or a milliner’s shop—she loves the feel

of marcelled hair, felt and tulle,

 

not this all-day standing around,

not that elevator lurching up, then down.

3. Secular

 

Workweek’s end

and there’s enough

block-ice in the box

to chill a washtub of colas

and one large melon,

dripping green.

After service, each house opens

heavy doors to street and woods,

one clear shot from front to back—

bullet, breeze, or holler.

A neighbor’s Yoo-hoo reaches her

out back, lolling, pulling in wash,

pillow slips billowing

around her head like clouds.

Up the block,

a brand-new Grafonola,

parlor music, blues parlando—

Big Mama, Ma Rainey, Bessie—

baby shake that thing like a saltshaker.

Lipstick, nylons

and she’s out the door,

tipping past the church house,

Dixie Peach in her hair,

greased forehead shining

like gospel, like gold.

4. Signs, Oakvale, Mississippi, 1941

 

The first time she leaves home is with a man.

On Highway 49, heading north, she watches

the pine woods roll by, and counts on one hand

dead possum along the road, crows in splotches

of light—she knows to watch the signs for luck.

He has a fine car, she thinks. And money green

enough to buy a dream—more than she could tuck

under the mattress, in a Bible, or fold between

her powdered breasts. He’d promised land to farm

back home, new dresses, a house where she’d be

queen. (Was that gap in his teeth cause for alarm?)

The cards said go. She could roam the Delta, see

things she’d never seen. Outside her window,

nothing but cotton and road signs—stop or slow.

5. Expectant

Nights are hardest, the swelling,

tight and low (a girl), Delta heat,

and that woodsy silence a zephyred hush.

So how to keep busy? Wind the clocks,

measure out time to check the window,

or listen hard for his car on the road.

Small tasks done and undone, a floor

swept clean. She can fill a room

with a loud clear alto, broom-dance

right out the back door, her heavy footsteps

a parade beneath the stars. Honeysuckle

fragrant as perfume, nightlife

a steady insect hum. Still, sh...