Bridgit Brown is a professor at Roxbury Community College. She has an upcoming poetry collection, Songs Beside A River That Refuses to Forget, to be released by the Ibbetson Street Press in December, 2026.

Dead Ham

Bunk said it the way the old folks said it, Dead Ham,
like meat hung too long in a smokehouse nobody visits anymore,
and I was nine and believed her, believed a town could be named for spoil.

Fourth grade, the yellow bus left Dorchester before the streetlights quit,
past three-deckers leaning on each other like tired aunts,
past the river, past the last corner store I knew the name of,
into lawns so wide and green they looked painted on.

The Joyce Kilmer School sat back from the road among its trees,
and the teachers said our names carefully, the way you carry a full pot.

In the gym they taught us the serpentine march:
single file, eyes on the neck in front of you,
fold back on yourself and pass the ones behind,
keep the line, keep the line, don’t you dare break the line.
I learned I could walk a long way and end up where I started.

In math we drew the right-angle triangle,
two short sides meeting clean at the corner, square as a kitchen table,
and the long side leaning off by itself, the hypotenuse,
the one that touches both and belongs to neither.
I copied it three times. I knew which side I was.

Afternoons the bus carried me back across the line,
and Bunk asked, How was Dead Ham today?
and I said fine, and set my books down,
and did not tell her the town smelled like cut grass, not meat,
and did not tell her I was learning to march.

— Bridgit Brown