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432 LISTEN HERE Someone has stoked the cooking stove and set brown loaves on the warming pan. Someone has laid out my softer clothes, and turned back the quilt. Listen: there is a vein that runs through the earth from top to bottom and both of us are in it. One of us is always burning. SUNDAY MORNING, 1950 from Six O'Clock Mine Report (1989) Bleach in the foot-bathtub. The curling iron, the crimped, singed hair. The small red marks my mother makes across her lips. Dust in the road, and on the sumac. The tight, white sandals on my feet. In the clean sun before the doors, the flounces and flowered prints, the naked hands. We bring what we can-some coins, our faces. The narrow benches we don't fit. The wasps at the blue hexagons. And now the rounding of the unbearable vowels of the organ, the 0 of release. We bring some strain, and lay it down among the vowels and the gladioli. IRENE MCKINNEY 433 The paper fans. The preacher paces, our eyes are drawn to the window, the elms with their easy hands. Outside, the shaven hilly graves we own. Durrett, Durrett, Durrett. The babies there that are not me. Beside me, Mrs. G. sings like a chicken flung in a pan on Sunday morning. . . . This hymnal I hold in my hands. This high bare room, this strict accounting. This rising up. THE ONLY PORTRAIT OF EMILY DICKINSON from Six O'Clock Mine Report (1989) The straight neck held up out of the lace is bound with a black velvet band. She holds her mouth the way she chooses, the full underlip constrained by a small muscle. She doesn't blink or look aside, although her left eye is considering a slant. She would smile if she had time, but right now there is composure to be invented. She stares at the photographer. The black crepe settles. Emerging from the sleeve, a shapely hand holds out a white, translucent blossom. "They always say things which embarrass my dog," she tells the photographer. She is amused, but not as much as he'd like. ...

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