Summary

In “A Plate of Bones” the speaker is being driven to by his “black muscular back-talking” uncle, who has several buckets full of fish in the car (13). The uncle mutters “Crackers” under his breath, a word the narrator describes as a “clump of tiny maggots in a trout’s brain” (13). In the next stanza, the speaker describes watching his uncle’s reaction as a white boy wraps his arm around his daughter before they leave for their date. The uncle represses his anger until they have left, at which point he expresses his displeasure to the speaker. When the daughter returns later that night, the uncle goes to work “beating a prayer out of her skin” (13).

“The Shepherd” is a poem in dialogue with another poem by James Dickey entitled “The Sheep-Child,” which is a poem about the legend shared by farm boys...