Woke for the first time in my life
chained aching woke in darkness
Woke in a dark my eyes
Couldn’t adjust to woke
chained to a ring in the floor
Head aching chained in a dark room
And hearing footsteps voices
overhead I realized
The room was underground
Woke and at first I couldn’t
Remember how I came to be in the room and after I
After remembering the men who ran the circus the
Two white men who with whom
I had been traveling
Remembered but I couldn’t understand
remembered only
Eagerness kindness in their faces
As they handed me the money I had earned
And kindness in their faces as they left me for the night
And woke in darkness was
In darkness for hours and no one came
I felt my way
around the room I found
The ring in the floor remembered
but I couldn’t understand I felt my way around
Crawling and in the darkness
I after a while couldn’t be sure
My eyes were open
Shane McCrae is the author of Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), and two chapbooks, One Neither One (Octopus Books, 2009) and In Canaan (Rescue Press, 2010). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry 2010, Fence, Agni, Denver Quarterly, Typo, and others.