The sense of privacy in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha and Jean Toomer’s Cane

To gather the last bit of shameless dignity we have    and wash our own dishes chipped and writhing with the sad chicken    from after the war and mutter  sooner     or later      somebody is gonna  show up about these trees     meaning     I’d   to see   you today     after snidely   slitting my eyes     at a few bicycle police.   I’d like   your embrace   to mean they felt   my indifference like  knives that I’m wistful  and dangerously approaching. Is   this what it feels like to    be on a bicycle with guns    in your holster and thrones. There    are people behind these doors who remind me    how to be intricate and recognize it    and let the man dance as I am dancing         for the camera that never comes nor ends up in  so much trouble you have to describe his hands in the cut   up gotcha color There is a way to be lazy and wait like a rumor      for domestic life to fulfill what it has run from in fear these cowards     who are also heroes of the small the fall these lies that go on forever     ironing shirts pressing confections into their mouths or television shadows in their  sleep like approximations of casual sex the junk of this privacy becomes tribe   a voluntary Birmingham