The House Down the Street
- The House Down the Street
is empty, the yellow house that used to be Mama Belle’s when she lived there with her boy, Wayne. Wayne who was so beautiful, so perfectly made— a high forehead crowned with black curls, and long delicate hands that cradled books or cupped blackberries or passed lightly over our heads like a blessing,
then held guns in Vietnam, and needles, and sometimes our tiny, girlish breasts. But mostly they held Mama Belle’s hands, trembling and clenching till the ushers pried them loose.
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.
