Portside

(for Arizona, Missouri and China Pettway,

                of Pettway Cotton Plantation)

You stitch and stitch with your dark

hands into the northeastern darkness of Selma.

You stitch the cordilleras of your names.

Cotton, corduroy, needles: Your Way

You stitch and stitch the curve

of the Alabama River.

They say you are as good as the modern

masters, Matisse and Klee.

They say you create the most miraculous

works of modern art; that you deconstruct

the traditional pattern: Monkey Wrench.

After careful cutting of faded and frayed

fabric, you say: I going to take his work clothes,

shape them into a quilt to remember him

And cover under it for love.

The poet writes: “I wrote 'Names and Housetops' after seeing the Gee’s Bend Quilts of Alabama Exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. I wrote the poem for the quilters, but forgot to put myself in — How I was sick in the heart, when I read the museum’s plaques for each quilt written in curator language. How a blanket of grief spread over me, as I saw the 1930s Census Bureau photographs of Pettway Plantations’ shoeless children and interior walls of dwellings covered with newspaper — surely for insulation, not inspiration as the curator had fancied. And how I could not breathe under all the weight in that terrible and beautiful space.”