Poem of the Week: DaMaris B. Hill

        

   

Stewing        

 

Dilapidated conditions magnified sickness, and typhoid, dropsy, and tuberculosis ravaged the institution and resulted in a number of inmates' deaths... Laura Williams, a black woman in her early twenties convicted in 1887, died of tuberculosis one month before her sentence ended.  

 --Kali N. Gross, Colored Amazons

I dream of hounds. Their teeth loose in my veins.

Their howls consume me. They growl and feast.

She whispers not to run. I can't refrain.

Nightmares of this cell stirring in my brain.

To survive I would suckle possums' teats.

I dream of hounds. Their teeth loose in my veins.

Sweat pours from my body. It's heavy rain.

My intestine rotting, rising, my tongue reeks.

She whispers not to run. I can't refrain.

Tuberculosis fevers stew my pain.

Curdle my stomach's bile. Vomit creeps.

I dream of hounds. Their teeth loose in my veins

Awake to my own barking. My voice strained.

The nurse's compress grips me like a leash.

She whispers not to run. I can't refrain.

She tells me to hush as I try to explain.

The stale air in this jail folds in, death's crease.

I dream of hounds. Their teeth loose in my veins.

She whispers do not run. I can't refrain.

-DaMaris B. Hill  

Used by permission.

Originally published in Reverie: Midwest African American Literature. Ed. Randal Horton. (2010). 5 September 2010. Print. (previously entitled Laura Dreams of Escape)

DaMaris B. Hill has a terminal degree in English-Creative Writing and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas.The majority of her poetry stresses connections. Her series of poems entitled boundlibertybelles are influenced by the research of Kali N. Gross in Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910. She is currently writing a novel about two parents' struggle to control their daughter's sexuality during the 1930s.  

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.    

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210