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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