I want to move away from this manuscript for a second
and really, for a time, new work on collecting.
We're on the border here, and I think a lot about--
I do a lot of history work and sometimes I
think well it's the past and what does it matter.
And then I remember that it always
resonates with where we are.
So I read this poem once in Virginia.
The thing that I've described in this poem
was a common way for slaves to escape in border states.
You couldn't do it much further south in Virginia
because you would--
it was bad.
And I read this poem and somebody
said I can't believe people used to do that.
And I said, 'do you not read the paper?
People do this all the time still.'
"Dinah in the Box".
"Dinah spent twenty hours with her face by the breathing hole.
Her body curled like a nursing child,
wondering what order of things she would offer
the man who opened her crate.
She had a particular trick that worked on Jennings when
she needed him to understand.
She meant to please but Dinah wouldn't be a bachelor's wench
in Philadelphia.
What angle would her legs take that first night
in Philadelphia, in relation to the woman spot between them.
Not this infant's pose she was confined to now.
Not any of the poses favored by Jennings.
What would her hands do.
Free to touch only what they chose.
She had twenty hours to remember every way she
folded to get into this box.
She took out extra brandy until Jennings railed
against the things he hated.
Taxes, drugs and abolitionists.
Turned out, old Harrison, the carpenter,
was suspected to be one.
She tracked Harrison.
And ask what price and means he'd name.
Those two tasks proved more simple than storing up
the coins that slipped from Jennings' pocket to the rug
beside the bed.
It took Diana seven months to collect enough to buy the box,
and pay Harrison for the bill of lading.
Diana touched her knees.
Tracing the hinge inside them that
would straighten in some white man's power.
She wasn't free yet.
But soon.
A man she would make herself trust
would prise open the lid of her crate."
Thank you.