February 19,1994
- February 19, 1994
We’re all in a black line saying goodbye. My brother, the oldest grandson, looks lost, his red face buoyed by whiskey. He holds our mother, shattered, but dignified, the way we’d hoped she’d be. Her black suit and hat are armor. Tears move down her face like wax. My aunts, svelte, New Yorkish, taste a private, refined sorrow. My sisters cling to each other. They are on the verge of this world, seeing her gone. We all are: family, friends, neighbors, church. The choir sings out weakly from their hymnals as the soloist’s strident notes hover. The minister raises the Bible, chants a prayer to “send our Sister home.” I clutch a book of poems, turn to the one written for her, and read, over and over, each word. Later, I’ll sift through the box my mother drags from beneath the bed, take the flowered, cotton dress, a safety pin piercing its pocket. A keepsake to hold off grief, folded and parceled like an envelope.
Selected works by Sharan Strange:
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• First Sight
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• Hunger
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• Natural Occurrences
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• Froggy’s Class: South Carolina, 1969
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• Dorothy
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• Mule
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• February 19,1994
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• Ash
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• The Unintended Life
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• The Factory
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• The Stranger
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• The Body
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• An Interview with Sharan Strange
Sharan Strange, a member of the Dark Room Collective, teaches literature and social studies at Parkmont School, an independent non-traditional middle and high school in Washington, D.C. In 1995, she received the M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She has been in residence at Yaddo, the Gell Writers’ Center, and the MacDowell Colony. Her poems have appeared in a number of periodicals and anthologies, including Agni, Black Bread, Best American Poetry, 1994 (A. R. Ammons, ed.), The Garden Thrives: Twentieth-Century African-American Poetry (Clarence Major, ed.), and Callaloo. Her poems have also been exhibited at the Whitney Museum (New York) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston). She is a native of Orangeburg, South Carolina.
