Mostly I say to myself Still here. Lay
my keys on the table, pack the perishables away
before flipping the switch. I like the sugary
look of things in bad light—one drop of sweat
is all it would take to dissolve an armchair pillow
into brocade residue. Sometimes I wait until
it’s dark enough for my body to disappear;

then I know it’s time to start out for work.

Along the Avenue, the cabs start up, heading

toward midtown; neon stutters into ecstasy

as the male integers light up their smokes and let loose

a stream of brave talk: “Hey Mama” souring quickly to

“Your Mama” when there’s no answer—as if

the most injury they can do is insult the reason

you’re here at all, walking in your whites

down to the stop so you can make a living.

So ugly, so fat, so dumb, so greasy—

What do we have to do to make God love us?

Mama was a maid; my daddy mowed lawns like a boy,

and I’m the crazy girl off the bus, the one

who wrote in class she was going to be President.

I take the Number 6 bus to the Lex Ave train
and then I’m there all night, adjusting the sheets,
emptying the pans. And I don’t curse or spit
or kick and scratch like they say I did then.
I help those who can’t help themselves,
I do what needs to be done . . . and I sleep
whenever sleep comes down on me.

The Enactment

“I’m just a girl who people were mean to
on a bus. . . . I could have been anybody.”

— MARY WARE, NÉE SMITH

Can’t use no teenager, especially
no poor black trash,
no matter what her parents do
to keep up a living. Can’t use
anyone without sense enough
to bite their tongue.

It’s gotta be a woman,

someone of standing:

preferably shy, preferably married.

And she’s got to know

when the moment’s right.

Stay polite, though her shoulder’s

aching, bus driver

the same one threw her off

twelve years before.

Then all she’s got to do is

sit there, quiet, till

the next moment finds her—and only then

can she open her mouth to ask

Why do you push us around?

and his answer: I don’t know but

the law is the law and you

are under arrest.
She must sit there, and not smile
as they enter to carry her off;
she must know who to call
who will know whom else to call
to bail her out . . . and only then

can she stand up and exhale,
can she walk out the cell
and down the jail steps
into flashbulbs and
her employer’s white
arms—and go home,
and sit down in the seat
we have prepared for her.

Rosa

How she sat there,

the time right inside a place

so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.