Nora Kane

THREE POEMS

NORA KANE

She was a Kane and the Kanes were white trash

Who lived in a cabin up Peasant Run.

They seasoned their fodder beans with groundhog,

Borrowed their bread-stuff and stole for fun.

All of the Kanes had the Old Nick's temper.

Their feet sashayed to the fiddle's tune,

And they could go to a patch of ginseng

Like their hound dogs followed a corn-fed coon.

Zed Sage was old when he married Nora

To brute and carry and do his will,

And the Sages called her a scheming hussy,

But she ruled the Sages and rules them still.

Her brown feet jigged to the hymns they quavered.

Her life blood swept through their torpid veins.

She signed her X in their family bible,

And filled their cradles with swarthy Kanes.