chicken bones, straw,
the cellar in which the man was found,
that man my grandfather
the day the sharecroppers left town,
their son shot dead —
the thing whiskey’ll do to a man.
The woman who waited under the house at night,
counting ghosts and bobcats through lattice of leaves,
walking bare-boned lanes,
toes buried beneath blackened leaves —
no cause for worry
if you’ve walked every acre, planted every row.
Nothing can get you if you pay it no mind.
I tell you these things
so you’ll not mistake my actions for fear,
not think I do not know what makes a life,
what makes people do the things they do.
I know my fears — I’ve named them,
counted them out one by one
like tarot cards, voodoo dolls:
birth,
death,
poverty,
obscurity,
that you will leave me,
or I will leave you.
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