Mrs. Coley’s three-flat brick Isn’t here any more. All done with seeing her fat little form Burst out of the basement door; And with seeing her African son-in-law (Rightful heir to the throne) With his great white strong cold squares of teeth And his little eyes of stone; And with seeing the squat fat daughter Letting in the men When majesty has gone for the day— And letting them out again.
Gwendolyn Brooks was the first person of color to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry or any Pulitzer, for that matter. She won in 1950, and you can only imagine the phrasing of newspaper headlines detailing her award. This is important information because it helps us understand this poem's deeper layers.
At first, it appears to be a pretty minimalist case of talking shit. An annoying neighbor is gone, and with her has gone her loser son-in-law (who she swears is royalty) and her whore of a daughter. The poem is celebratory gossip over some afternoon coffee.
If not for our knowledge of her lifelong literary fight against racism and the effects of institutionalized racism on Black people, we might have taken this as just a simple light-hearted badmouthing. But as Richard Wright said so poignantly about her work, it “catches the pathos of petty destinies.”
There is a vacant lot where a house once was. More displacement and destruction of a community, giving way to nothingness. To rubble. And rather than reflect on how horrible this is, we are trained to sling shit. To make jokes.
Each character gets a quatrain, with their own rhyme. But just as they were not important enough to care for and protect from this void, their stanzas are not important enough to be separated. They are slapped together and rushed through.
There is no great sending off of little, fat Mrs. Coley. She is simply “all done.” Similarly, gone is the son-in-law, and now there is a different shade to the snark in the parenthetical. It is an eye-roll to the suggestion of being something greater than what society has laid out for you. And what is saved of his wonderful traits? That his teeth were strong and white. This is not accidental imagery. The stereotype attached to the daughter is an old reliable one: the hypersexualized, morally barren adultress.
Brooks doesn't offer any answers to where these characters have gone because she knows no one will care to ask. She confronts us with the ugliness and challenges us to see beyond the surface. The vacant lot isn't just about Mrs. Coley's quirks or the daughter's perceived immorality. It's a stark reminder of the human cost of social decay, a void we're all complicit in filling with gossip until we confront the uncomfortable truth. No elegies for Mrs. Coley, no hero's farewell for the son-in-law. Just a vacant lot where their stories once lived, replaced by a shrug and a sneer.
My hero Gwen! Thanks for your analysis Mike, you hit the head of the nail.