What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Acknowledgments

What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison poetry a C a m i L L E t. Dungy rED hEn PrEss Los angELEs What to Eat,What to Drink,What to Leave for Poison Copyright © 2006 by CamilleT. Dungy ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner. Cover art: “Southern Woman” by James Denmark 24” x 30”, collage. 1999 Book design by MichaelVukadinovich Cover design by Mark E. Cull Author Photo by DeWardrick Mack ISBN: 1-59709-000-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001012345 Red Hen Press www.redhen.org The City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, California Arts Council, Los Angeles County Arts Commission and National Endowment for the Arts partially support Red Hen Press. First edition my family in spirit and in blood,this book,with love,is for you This page intentionally left blank. aCknoWLEDgEmEnts Poems in the manuscript have appeared or are forthcoming in the following publications: “Language” and “First Fire” (as “AtTen”) in Weber Studies; “How Quickly HeWent,”“Before My History Classes,”“Vo-Tech” (reprinted on Poetry Daily),“From Someplace,”“In His Library,” and “Lament” in The Missouri Review; “Concordance” in Beloit Poetry Journal; “Depression” and “What You Want” in Hotel Amerika; “Visiting Springfield in Winter” in 32 Poems; “Requiem” on www. fishousepoems.org; “black spoon” in Brilliant Corners (reprinted on www.fishousepoems.org); “Jacob’s Ladder, Jacob Lawrence,” in Obsidian III and in Image/Word:A Book of Poems; “Black Boy,” “Here’s $100, cause I’ll be coming back the other way,” and “Greyhound to Baton Rouge” in Warpland:A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas; “Got” in Ekphrasis; “We were two rooms of one timber, but I left that place alone,” “Farm Bureau Advisor” (reprinted on the NEA Writers’ Corner website),“Free Masons at the Door,” and “Service Station,Tennessee” in The Southern Review; “How She Didn’t Say It” in Cave CanemVI, Anthology 2001; “The Abattoir” in Caketrain; “To Put Things Right” in Cider Press Review; “How It Happened,” in Sou’Wester; “Fear” in The Louisville Review; “Ark” in Melic Review; “My Grandmother Takes theYouth Group to Services,” in HerMark 2003,Woman Made Gallery; “Cleaning” in Crab Orchard Review; “The Preachers Eat Out” (reprinted on www. fishousepoems.org), and “After Applying to Harvard, Colgate, Yale” (reprinted on the NEA Writers’ Corner website) in Mid-America Review; “What to Eat, and What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison” in The Midwest Quarterly. The writing of many of these poems has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for theArts,TheVirginia Center for the CreativeArts, the Rocky Mountian National Park Artist-in-Residence Program,The Ragdale Foundation,The Corporation ofYaddo,A Room of One’s Own Foundation, The Norton Island/Eastern Frontier Society, and the Cave Canem Foundation, as well as the Tennessee Williams Scholarship at the Sewanee Writers Workshop, and the John Atherton Scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. What to Eat,What to Drink,What to Leave for Poison benefited from the support, care, and critical eyes of many readers, teachers, and friends including Tayari A. Jones, V. Penelope Pelizzon, Shara McCallum, Jane Satterfield,Tara Powell,William Logan, Laura-Gray Street, Matt O’Donnell, Lola Haskins, Tyehimba Jess, Aviya Kushner, Reetika Vazirani, Emily Warn, Jim Peterson, Marilyn Nelson, my Cave Canem family, and my own dear family: Dr. Claibourne I. Dungy, Dr. Madgetta T. Dungy, Dr. EdgarT.Thornton, Dr. MadgeThornton, JesseW. Dungy, Euphemia Mickens Dungy, Dr. Kathryn R. Dungy, and Jesse L. Dungy. I thank you all for your consistent support, your dedication to poetry, and your insistence that this book find its own best way to honor the word. This page intentionally left blank. ...