Our boy, having learned to inventory
the everyday, meets two dandies & their slave
as the train pulls from the station in Detroit.
Lazy, tired, the Southerners buy Edison’s round
armful of newspapers & toss them out the window,
instructing the slave to pay the bill.
Our boy brings all the print he’s got,
all of the polite columns with their rumblings
on abolitionists, slavers, lynchings - out the window.
Edison knows enough to play to the crowd
when someone else is paying. Wise sarcastic boy,
next he presents a stack of novels
taller than he is. Out the window. Cracked
hickory nuts, popcorn balls, molasses candy? Out.
His coat, hat, shoes? Out.
And finally his trunk, tied with a rope & dragged
from car to car. It all goes out the window, except the trunk.
The slave pushed that out the back door.
He & Edison watched it settle heavily next
to the tracks. And then the slave paid up,
knowing exactly
how much it cost to free him, what argument
might pick his lock. (The newsprint caught & soared
like smoke or sooty birds
aimed at the heart of the sun.)
No comments:
Post a Comment