Eviction of Alice Carpenter

In the low country, in the swamp-peppered cradle of Louisiana,
the widow Alice Carpenter trims a potholed lawn made dense
by the suffocating fruitfulness of bayou humidity beyond rickety porch fronts
and the screen door still dewed from morning rainfall.
    She pauses.
    And she motions insincere welcome with a nod
    at the White Man in his tawdry emerald suit.
She watches, blamelessly spiteful, as he steps proudly over cracked cement
and into her peeling kitchen to speak of business with the Brother.

When he leaves, he stops and glances at her baby in the rocking chair
while the boy stares back with Ebony eyes, glaring black freckles.
    And he will judge.
    And he will judge.
Until, borders affirmed between man, between boy,
the Suit descends the fractured steps and smugly walks
the trail through the lawn.

And Alice Carpenter spits away her fury at his unknowing feet.

When the Brother steps out, he tells Alice of defeat with his eyes,
    and she falls before the rosebay's bloom,
    and she falls before the iris infected by wildflowers,
driven from the four-room White Mansion on an intersection of
nameless roads.