Zora Neale Hurston

Sorting laundry has never been an occasion
for contemplating race relations

until now.  Nor have fighting couples and their snakes
turned me in turn to Adam and Eve.  Now that the bull's whip

lays aground, I recall that Queen sugar was a slave
-dependent crop. The profit's wrung out only with sweat

and not-so-subtle colonizations.  The snakes always return,
in boxes or hampers, sliding up to urge one to apples.

The whites, on the other hand, remain in their baskets
like all things stacked against you.