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Callaloo 27.2 (2004) 392


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Here, One of Your Four Women

for Nina Simone

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Given a row to hoe, strain
until it yields justification.
A body drifting toward the grave;
or a girl too young to take her truth bravely;

or lady grown, holding onto the men
who don't want her;
or the last of the line, broken—Peaches—
dueling the air with her fist.

Each with the hoe grasped, every
so often her fingers brandished
as weapon, pulling the scolding
weeds, unrepentant, from the ground.

Each dropping the hoe, salute making
her brow a space of shade.
Heat shimmying, same row,
wisdom (shoot—work on some more),

chords of light sneaking away.
Wait.—Is that a note of praise
pinched now from a scarlet-breasted
creature, lifting over the crown of trees?

Here, one of your four women, Nina.
What marks her mocked, mocking horizon?
Stilled, she sighs over a small,
freed something.

Quickened, that woman bends, rises, bends:
another row.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is author of two books of poetry, second book of poetry, The Gospel of Barbeque and Outlandish Blues. Some of her new work recently appeared in Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and the anthology These Hands I know: Writing About The African American Family. She is Assistant Professor of English at The University of Oklahoma and a book review editor of Callaloo.


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