Up Dublin Street at twilight, Gladys
waits at windows, watching night unroll its carpet
onto the floors of the house. She stopped
the clock when she sent her girls, with them
the plate she’d laid for their father who works
nights at the hospital lot gathering tips. She’d baked
the cornbread, buttered the rice, turned out
the pinto beans before burning,
though there are times when the shadow comes and she
forgets. That hovering white
face, white breath inside her breath, her heels in the icy
stirrups where the nurse had placed them. She was young
then and golden, eyes pale
as the gray lake, hair smooth without lye, her nose
keen enough. Now she walks only
to church, though she’ll often look
towards town. She’ll take
company if the pastor stops. He holds her hand as if
it were a sparrow, says:
You must not name the devil. But these things
do have a way
of naming themselves.