Wyatt says this poem was as tricky to write as a villanelle. Her work has been read on NPR, featured in “American Life in Poetry,” and published in journals including New Letters, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review.

“My family arose from a line that defines white privilege and power, in a place of authority that has twisted the lives of many. Over generations, my family helped shape the Jim Crow laws in Alabama, convict the innocent and protect the guilty.”

Some readers feel intimidated by poetry. Maybe somewhere along the way, the emphasis was placed on what a poem means. What a poem “means” is the booby prize. It’s the consolation prize.