Abortions will not let you forget.
Gwendolyn Brooks
When she wrote about the damp small pulps
in 1945, it was her first book,
and she was black, twenty, small. And she was a woman.
The editor said, Miss Brooks, please remove this
poem, and she said, The poem stays.
In those days, editors descended from a long train
full of men who lived in houses where things unspoken
happened, speeding away from things beginning to turn.
I like to think of them standing in Random House,
her little sheaf inside a warehouse of stacked words.
What is there to say about a poem complete
in its understanding of what never was
by a writer who would not be shaped by silence.
Of two people in a dim room, one in white
shirtsleeves, one adjusting her hat before she steps
out to the sidewalk and squints up at the sun.
YOU ARE READING
The Dictators' Guide to Good Housekeeping
PoetrySelected by Margaret Atwood for the 2012 Atty Award. Collection of 10 poems. (The cover photo is a detail from the painting "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" by Dorthea Tanning. Tate Collection, London).