Understanding Emma Lamb can’t be done. I hold the urge
to visit the past, past a court case
from 1942. The evidence duly made
and whatever that means, what sort of song is this
to live in the history books? Appeal and error, it said: and for hours
I followed the judgment to a per curiam,
agonizing its theme. Nothing is free, the law states,
and so Emma, a common law wife, the first begrudged
woman in stone-bruised Oklahoma, had her future
given away. How did she keep calm when the claim
was read? Emma walked to the courthouse
in a housedress that February, her man dead
three years by then. Winter was bubbling. Her face worn
to weary. All she had was the land
they kept, a meager pantry, the bed she climbed into
persistent for decades. Or did they take that too?
