white line broken line white dividing
right from right white sign house oh
New England white church white
meeting house on green commons
where slaves could not stroll at night
in Boston carry sticks or canes
where African slaves were first bought
with Pequots captured in Just warre
where slaves were sometimes sold in taverns
where churches bought them for ministers
where ministers lawyers doctors farmers
used them for cutting carting hoeing
husking mowing ferrying carrying
and where in any case the slave trade . . .
where the last slave died in 1859 in Rhode Island
oh New England your white meeting broken oh
#7 and #31 from White Papers, by Martha Collins c 2012. All rights are controlled by The University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Martha Collins is a poet, translator, the editor-at-large for Field Magazine, and an editor at Oberlin College Press. She is the author of the poetry volumes, Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012), Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), Some Things Words Can Do (Sheep Meadow, 1998), A History of a Small Life on a Windy Planet (University of Georgia, 1993), The Arrangement of Space (Gibbs Smith, 1991) and The Catastrophe of Rainbows (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1985). Her volume Admit One: An American Scrapbook is forthcoming in 2016.
