This page was created by Delaney McLemore. The last update was by David Squires.
Erasing Candy
My poem is an erasure of something erased, taken from pages not found in the published novel. This manuscript draft, part of the Gaines Center collections on A Gathering of Old Men, is a chapter from Candy's perspective that did not make it into later drafts. Candy Marshall might own the Marshall Plantation, but she does not own this story or the stories shared between these men. Candy doesn't narrate a chapter in the final edition of A Gathering of Old Men, nor should she, so my goal in playing with these pages was to make something that erases Candy from even this collection of words told mainly in her voice. I think the speaker of this poem isn't present in this novel, but the speaker of the poem, really, could be any of the men. This might be why Candy doesn't get to have a narrative chapter of her own: she's the only person who thinks the way she does and it doesn't help to tell the stories of the old men.
Erasing Candy
The Quarters, the inside
of a chimney where I was all
over the place, proud of it.
"Go away from here."
We didn't answer him.
"Parrain, please."
He gets blue in the face.
I stand here, a grown man,
an old man, proud of it.
I will get my day's work.
I christened this dog a thousand times,
the son of a bitch.
Don't y'all tell him where I was.
Yes, I did it. Maybe now
I've succeeded,
sweating and begging.