Summary

“Incident” is a pantoum in which the speaker describes an incident in which, presumably, members of the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross on their front lawn. “We tell the story every year … though nothing really happened” they repeat in the first and final stanza, referring to the way in which they relive the event over and over again in their minds (41). Throughout the poem the speaker uses imagery typically associated with the Christmas holiday in order to describe the event, such as “the cross trussed like a Christmas tree” and “a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns” (41).

“Providence” details the speaker’s experiencing of Hurricane Camille in 1969. The poem begins with a description of the enduring footage of the storm, “hurricane/parties, palm trees leaning/in the wind,” and then shifts to their own memories of the event, “huddled...