She’s braiding corn rows—
decades back her family worked
long rows of cotton.

Her fingers twine hanks
as if no sore thumbs ever
bled from the spiked bolls.

It’s a job, she says,
cutting free from stiffened knots.
She toys with her plaits,

lustrous, then jerks them,
choking out the nagging dead
who prick her fingers:

their stripped backs braided
with lashes, ghosts like bulged sheaves
bunched for the crossing.