Accounting
- Accounting
Nights too warm for TV we’re flung outdoors to the porch, citronella candles scenting the space between us, our faces aglow in gold light. She crowds the card table with coin banks, an abacus, five and ten dollar rolling paper, our tidy ledger.
I count, line the coins in neat rows, the abacus clicking out our worth, how much we can save, stack up against the seasons—winter coming, her tightly braided hair turning white; her hands quick, filling the paper casings like homemade sausage.
There’s money in the bank downtown, but this we’ll keep at home buried in jars beneath the house, the crawlspace filling up, packed solid as any foundation.
Selected works by Natasha Trethewey:
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• Accounting
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• Beginning
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• Calling His Children Home
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• Closing Time
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• Deedywops
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• Delta Sharecroppers, 1930
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• Expectant
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• History Lesson
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• Hot Comb
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• The House Down the Street
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• Saturday Drive
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• Secular
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• The Four Corners
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• Laying the Waves
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• An Interview with Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey, a member of the Dark Room Collective, is studying for the Ph.D. in English at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), where she received the M.F.A. in creative writing in 1995. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of periodicals, including The Massachusetts Review, Seattle Review, Agni, The Southern Review, African American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Callaloo.
