From Eliot Khalil Wilson’s “Origin Blues: An Elegy” (NER 29.4, 2008):
I come from the coffee and Chesterfield dawn,
I come from the tender-mouthed crappie and the warmouth perch; afraid of bankers, afraid of police car spotlights,
skies turning green and packs of wild dogs in the corn at night
And I believe what they say about my blood:
a tick’s grip, mule resolute, hacksaw spined,
overtime on the foundry’s knock-out line,
the bottom dog, the oysterman fighting the tide
though every night the tide gathers its things and leaves.