From “Native Guard” by Natasha Treathewey
“salt, sugar, even this journal, near full
with someone else’s words, overlapped now,
crosshatched beneath mine. On every page,
his story intersecting with my own.”
Palimpsest
Black textile worker boots ground
metal clips into wooden floors
in an apartment where college students
set down a red Ikea couch.
I shower in a makeshift stall,
with the MEN’S sign still on the door,
staring at tiny green tiles
and white cement blocks.
Air conditioning hangs
twenty feet up between red
metal poles, crying against heat
outside the paned windows
where a train carts coal
instead of carpet.
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