[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
The next poem I'm going to read, which
will be next to the last poem, well this
is one called "Polly and Platt."
I guess I'll read that one.
And this is Platt talking.
This is a slave man who had to beat her
because she went next door to get soap to wash herself with,
and this was a plantation next door to her.
And she went over to get some soap from the couple who
lived there.
The man was free, and he was married
to a woman on the plantation.
And Polly went next door to get to some soap to cleanse herself
because her master had just raped her,
and she was beaten by one of the other slaves.
And Platt is talking to us.
All she could do was call my name, Platt, Platt,
for I had beaten her all I could,
till I could scourge her no more.
And then Ephrim our master finished the job.
Platt, oh, Platt, like a calling to hell, my own,
since I'd given her the first wound.
But not of my own will because Ephrim held the whip over me
and forced me into it.
She lay tender, sighing out of her spirit,
asking mine for courage, in a way, forgiving me.
What has she done?
Borrowed soap from her neighbor, asked
Molly the Black woman married to her owner,
for something to get clean because she
had lain with Ephrim, and he would have it no other way.
She needed cleanliness, and he took her even
in the middle of her punishment.
Was it that?
Was something out there punishing
Polly for her big spirit that let
her sleep with a crippled monster and she with impunity?
As she lay in tallow wax to heal her bleeding back,
he opened her wounds over and over again
and the wax melted and let out the pus that
mingled with her, his white flesh that was no longer white,
but smelled of damp mold.
And what she knew of burial and death,
she could bring no child from that.
Platt.
Oh, Platt.
I'll go to hell, Platt, she moaned,
and I'll find him there.
I will, hissing and steaming and dripping sour growls,
breaking into me like a hot lash.
Devils don't hiss as well as he when
he plunges into my body, my soul, ah Platt!
And her spirit left.
Though she's alive, she ain't.
She doesn't exist anymore.
Her body moves through the house like a phantom
and vanishes at sunset, and no one ever knows where she goes,
not even Ephrim.
When next we see her sometimes before the rise
of the first light on the hill, she's
moving like ash, floating about in pieces.
Her head hung like a scarecrow, and a smile
don't jump into your throat and make you happy
the way it used to when she was herself,
walking through daisies, giving God his chores.