Poems by Gregory Orr

The Demonstration
Solitary Confinement

THE DEMONSTRATION
Democratic Natioal Convention
Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1964

They bob above us all afternoon — 
three giant charcoal portraits
of Goodman, Schwerner. and Chaney.
civil rights martyrs whose tortured
bodies have just been found
in the red clay wall
of a dam in rural Mississippi.

Staring up at their flat, larger-
than-life faces, I envy the way
they gaze at the gray ocean
and the gray buildings
with the calm indifference
of those whose agonies are over .
Myself, I'm a frightened teenager
at my fIrst demonstration.
carrying a placard that demands
the seating of a mixed delegation
from a Southern state.

         No one
prepared me for the crowd's hostility.
the names we're called.


Still, we chant the slogan reason
proposed: "One man. one vote."
And still it holds — the small shape
we make on the dilapidated boardwalk — 
reminding me now of the magic circles
medieval conjurers drew
to protect themselves from demons
their spells had summoned up.

Copyright © Gregory Orr, 1964, all rights reserverd.

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
Hayneville, Alabama, 1965

Even as the last bars clang
shut and I start to rub the purple ache
clubs left on shoulders, ribs,
and shins, my mind is fashioning
an invisible ladder.
lt's rungs an lifts of escape.

They've taken the SNCC pamphlets
but let me keep a book
of Keats — poems reminiscent
of my sad, adolescent affair
with the coffln-maker's daughter,
which taught me many things,
including carpentry.

        And when, at dusk,
the trusty held for car theft brings
my tray of grits and fatback,
it won't matter so much that,
groaning and puking,
I'll be sick for hours.

Imagination is good wood; by midnight
I'll be high as that mockingbird
in the magnolia across the moonlit road.

Copyright © Gregory Orr, 1965, all rights reserverd.

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