"Photograph, 1983" and "Sandbagging"

Photograph, 1983

for Lola Bell

When you and my grandmother both got old,and she could not bearthe empty house, and all your childrenwere gone as well, some nights the two of you

crawled into her brass bed"like a pair of old spinsters," your sistersays. I am learning so latehow it was. You and my grandmother:

born the same year, and bothyour husbands went to fight in the war,though yours never returned.And in this picture—

my grandmother must have taken it—you're smiling, probably becausewe've been told to. And I'm smiling, too,fierce with new teeth:

we're a girl in an Easter dresscaked with mud, gripped by a womanhalf blind, lock-kneed, starched.We are still standing there, looking out.

Sandbagging

Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, 1997

To highway-road,  to rock-build.To tree-split,  fence-string,hammer.

Prisoner porter,  prisoner freight.

To hammer,  to hammer.

You hold bags open,  you funnelthe sand.  You tie themclosed and load  here,to the truckbed.

Prisoner faithful,  prison of storms.

To harbor  and winnow,to salvage.  Your mothersunmothered,  you bolster.

The warden says fill  and you fill it.

The river says  break

        and you still it.