Southern Dining Room

That ominous feeling we’ve been there
and it wasn’t good.

Swift, silent movement—
shifting shadows on the carpet

carrying trays, pouring wine
like butlers in plantation houses.

The same obsequious manners,
each smiling self erased.

After the marches, sit-ins, strikes,
what happened to the promised land?









Sharon Scholl is retired professor of humanities and non-western studies. Her chapbook, Summer’s Child, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Single poems appear currently in Adanna, Caesura, and Switched-on Gutenberg. Her poem was in response to *82’s call for material about obscure, overlooked people.

See another in issue 4.3