Editor’s Note: Kate Foran served as an intern and staff for Word and World from July 2004 through January 2006. She now serves on the national board.

First Day

The day I arrive Reverend Johnson greets me.
I know about his scars from the Klan killings 25 years ago.
He shows me the neighborhood.
We walk to an island of grass cut by three roads.
The pavement cannot hide the hints of old cobblestone near the train tracks.
We stop at a sign marking where the Confederate Cabinet met for the last time.
We read a monument erected to the Grey.
The breezes after the weekend’s hurricane leave the day clear and deceptively cool.

Signs

These markers stand throughout the city like soldiers.
They hold the line of history.
They pin what’s alive and writhing beneath posts.
But just beyond the historical markers for the Civil War
are a new set of signs with another testimony.
They tell of the sit-ins and demonstrations for Civil Rights,
and neither do they avert their eyes.

Signs II

They cleaned up the neighborhood a few years back.

Police patrol the park for drug dealers and homeless people.
There are flower plantings and benches on the corners.
“This is Greensboro City Property” the official sign reads.
Scrawled on cardboard and posted to the telephone pole: “The Land is Not Yours.”

The Land is Not Yours

I sit on a donated swing
on the porch of a donated house
watching a sunset
that nobody owns.

New Neighbor

You’re mixed, ain’t you?
my new neighbor asks.
I look at my tanned olive skin
and for a minute
consider saying yes.

On the Porch

We share a 40 ounce of King Cobra with our neighbor Nate.
We pour it into wine glasses. He tells about his kids in New Orleans.
He hasn’t seen them in eight years.
His laughs turn to coughs
as deep and rattling as history.