Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Rashad L. Givhan has long enjoyed writing and draws much of his inspiration from the countless summers he spent with his grandparents in Altheimer, Arkansas. He is currently working on a Master of Arts in English/Creative Writing at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, where he also works as a graduate intern for the UMKC Office of Multicultural Student Affairs. Upon graduation (May 2008), he plans to pursue his dream of becoming an eccentric English professor.
From a curvy domestic
who scrubs floors in threadbare dresses.
No store-bought patterns—from scratch,
something thought up. A kerchief
covers sprigs of wiry, dishwater hair.
*
From a stout sharecropper
who teaches himself to whistle, who combs red clay
with tools fired by an unlikely blacksmith.
Whose anvil is a white oak stump,
whose bending fork is an old truck axel.
He only whistles hard-luck tunes
to his crops.
*
From a cantankerous mulatto with crystalline eyes
like morning.
His wavy hair is a tuft of licorice.
Oh, the penchant he has for slapping folk
silly—for calling foes out of their names!
Tall yellow man
with the cleft chin
who chooses the blackest girl
of the lot to wed.
*
From a mahogany woman
who shouts to the Lord; the daughter
of the slave woman who ran away.
Keeps the Bible open
on the kitchen table like a cookbook, and gathers
all the children round—dusty feet scurry
on pinewood planks.
Psalm 23 through the storms.
*
From a husky loud mouth who digs wells
and makes moonshine for a living.
Beats his wife when he drinks.
Made her a widow much too soon.
White folks in a ’42 Chevy pickup
crushed him along the Natchez Trace
and just kept on driving—
more than one way to
......lynch
................a
.....................nigger.
We howled with the moon
and the moonshine that night.
