SAMANTHA GOES TO HARLEM
The house had been in her family.
Its back yard now a cut-through
fences pushed down flat
garage wall a graffiti canvas.
Samantha sat on the porch
staring at the embossed letters
framed in alternating colors
giving depth a fatalistic texture.
Words collected as racial slurs.
The list was immeasurably long
extending down from the wall
onto a neighbor’s shared driveway.
Picaninny was a new one to her.
Art reveals everything eventually.