In These Houses
by Brenda Marie Osbey

There is more to the poems than the title reveals; the first poem is actually called “In These Houses of Swift Easy Women.” The houses are fine Louisiana lush, they have come through generations, and generations have come through them. But it is the women moving through them that matter. “All you see and hear in me/ is these women/ walking in the middle of the road/ with their hoodoo in their hands.” Young and old, soft and hard, they have all learned something, and now they teach. Their stories weave a wonderful cloth, the voices lapping and overlapping. In the houses they inhabit, “a man could get lost.” Even so, he could gain a lot. —Library Journal

Poems Include:

• Beauty
• The Bone-step Women
• Clarissa
• Consuela
• Elvena
• Fly Away Home
• Geography
• The Godchild
• The House
• House Of Bones
• House Of Mercies
• How I Became The Blues
• In These Houses Of Swift Easy Women
• Letter Home
• Little Eugenia’s Lover
• The Old Women On Burgundy Street
• Portrait
• Sister And The Shadowman
• Speaking Of Trains: Incognito: Woman In Blue
• Speaking Of Trains: Movement 2: How To Meet The Train
• Speaking Of Trains: South Train Study, Movement 1
• Thelma
• The Wastrel-woman Poem