ChickenBones: A Journal

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A Poetic Response to the Beauty & Endurance of Black Women
 

 

The Washer-Woman

By Otto Leland Bohanan

A great swart cheek and the gleam of tears,

The flutter of hopes and the shadow of fears,

And all day long the rub and scrub

With only a breath betwixt tub and tub.

Fool! Thou hast toiled for fifty years

And what hast thou now but thy dusty tears?

In silence she rubbed . . . But her face I had seen,

Where the light of her soul fell shining and clean.

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posted 22 June 2008

 

 
Otto Leland Bohanon was born in Washington, D.C. and educated in the public schools in Washington. He is a graduate of Howard University, School of Liberal Arts, Washington, D.C., and did special work in English at the Catholic University in that city. He was also engaged in the musical profession in New York.

Source: The Book of American Negro Poetry Chosen and Edited with an Essay on The Negro's Creative Genius By James Weldon Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922

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