by Herbert Woodward Martin
Those few black women who were sacred to the moment
took what seemed useless and cleaned the dirt from its feet,
then took stock of the remaining organs worthy enough to
be cooked removing the dust from the ears and nostrils,
cleaning the excrement from the walls of the intestines,
using what was left of their patience to make food from
nothing and delight their husbands and children by soothing
their special hungers at the home’s table of grace. Their acts
of love washed away sadness and despair for they took care
with the use of words, and the sharpness of their sentences
they made. Those women saw carefully their oppressors, and
taught their offspring to eat that which others declared, for no
rational reason, useless.
Herbert Woodward Martin’s newest poetry collection is The Shape of Regret (Wayne State University Press, 2019), and his poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, RATTLE, Massachusetts Review, African American Review, and numerous other journals. He was Professor of English at The University of Dayton and was a Fulbright Scholar in 1990-1991.