Selected Poems
The bath
His grandmother grabbed handfuls of that wild boy
dragging him out of that dirt yard and into the tub.
Maybe she hated the color of his skin, because she doused
him in Dettol, scrubbed him stiff with her bristle wire brush.
Her hardened face and nose scrunched up at his feral stink.
Her sharp guttural warnings allowed him to catch a breath.
She rough dunked his head, repeatedly, under the water.
She relished each soaking, empowered with each plunge.
Was her vengeance for things the boy had done or might do?
Regardless, she made the boy pay for some sins of his father.
The boy refused to talk back or shed a tear, maybe out of respect
or defiance. Perhaps thinking, it was just supposed to be this way.
At the end of the evening, his mother returned, without any question.
She picked him up as planned and brought her little redskin boy home.
