The landlady tendered me notice today—me
 after twenty-one years treading these upper floors.
 Her reason? With folks so flocking this waterway-to-be
 no one couple needs seven rooms; and then, too,
 there are neighbors who think she is housing the hub
 of a Communist wheel—I was hostess to whites
 here for the holidays—and she fears a snub
 from the neighborhood club.
 The furniture store has ended the stay
 of my influenced by Louise Quinze set. It left
 me regretting that I couldn’t pay.
 The remaining Rococo wall scones are bereft.
 My boss has replaced his soft smile with a stare.
 His wife says I’ll have to excuse her from any more parties.
 That once crowded cupboard is just about bare now.
 She says I was trying to use her.
 The doctor of aesthetics murmurs complaint. I’ll deflower
 my spell for significant form, curb the artistic curve,
 he says, if I enter this racial fray—
 But had you been here
 the power of your African swerve
 would have steadied my listing art-lovers’ soiree.
 For as soon as he’d seen your symmetrical sheen,
 your stately Watusi-like stance,
 your contours, as true as the bronze of Benin,
 this dean of aesthetics would have echoed
 Picasso before him in praise and conferred
 a prized prize. And I would have foiled fictions
 like filthy, brute, slum; and spiked
 a few racial preference fear wheels
 by exhibiting you as my overall goal
 to the present daring white dears.
 had I but been able, that day, to dazzle
 true ebony art could display.
 But you didn’t come to the party.
 So, I stranded the guests and walked the floor
 and looked out the windows and watched the door
 for a glimpse of your panther-like pace, for
 a glimpse of your smoother than panther
 and almost as beautifully dark, face.




















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