The Jamaicans who came to can corn
at the Green Giant plant in the ’40’s
were sinuously thin and so black
that a lame word offered to them in greeting
went right through their skins without
raising a ripple. Our own black families
(we spoke that way, of our black families),
the Martins and Shipps, had lived among us
so long it no loner mattered,
but these Jamaicans were different.
They kept to themselves, in loose clusters,
and knives flashed from the shadows
when they picked their teeth or scraped
Iowa from under their pale, perfect nails.
And when they talked they sounded like pianos;
all over the keyboard went there honkey-tonk
laughing and talking. Word got around
that out of pure spite and meanness
sometimes they peed in the creamed corn
as it sluffed through the trough. Then the plant
shut down for the year, and they were gone,
and neighborly old Bob Martin rose up
and went down, up and down, in his place,
running the lift in our only hotel. Years later,
wherever we’ve gone, whatever we’ve come to,
our ignorance spoils the cream corn.