We tell the story every year— how we peered from the windows, shades drawn— though nothing really happened, the charred grass now green again.
We peered from the windows, shades drawn, at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree, the charred grass still green. Then we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.
At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree, a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns. We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps, the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil.
It seemed the angels had gathered, white men in their gowns. When they were done, they left quietly. No one came. The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil; by morning the flames had all dimmed.
When they were done, the men left quietly. No one came. Nothing really happened. By morning all the flames had dimmed. We tell the story every year.
Natasha Trethewey, a VQR contributing editor, served two terms as the nineteenth Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (HMH, 2018), which was longlisted for the National Book Award; Thrall (HMH, 2012); Native Guard (Mariner, 2007), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002); and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000), which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Trethewey is also the author of the memoir Memorial Drive (Ecco, 2020). She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
