Posts for June 15, 2020 (page 7)

Today is a treat, today I get red eye gravy
ham frying up on the stove
a heart beat of my childhood memories
red eye gravy — a rich, thick, salty, coffee recipe

Frying up on the stove
a southern smell of fat-rich food
red eye gravy — its secret is in the coffee 
cooked into it
I can smell the ham cooking 
the gravy with its button holes

The smell of home
it gets into the being
I can smell that uniquely rich scent
Salty country ham, biscuits, red eye gravy

My Doctor wouldn’t approve
but he isn’t here
this meal is heart rich 
home cooking, soul enriching
southern food, with its fried up 
salty, rich comfort
Today is a treat, today I get red eye gravy

I’m weak,
But is that such a bad thing,
From weakness comes bonds,
From bonds come strength,
Brotherhood is the most powerful source of strength,
These bonds of brotherhood are so strong,
Even the most powerful are nothing against them

She was walking with me in the garden,
I said do you want to have some lunch with me.
She didn’t trust my eyes.
I said come with me I don’t bite.
She wondered if she should go back to him.

I said I’ve been wandering back and forth on the earth.
I’ve popped in and out of it.
I’m glad I’ve found you.

I’m going to kiss you.

Hold still.

She confided in me… she liked my experience.
And just then she took… a bite.

It was not hard to persuade him to do it too. 
The two of them were so very…  very nice.

Raucous 3 a.m. clatter
at the 53rd Street Dominican
bar. I’ve moved to Brooklyn
from an island with no
incorporated town & two stop
signs. A noisy day
when I could hear eagles
mating from the deck. Face

to face with fear — or was it
prejudice? Big cities mean double
deadbolts, murder, mace. Eyes
down on the subway. I waited.
It took months but the city’s chattering
pandemonium became a living
body. Bar racket began
to remind me of a tree

of crows. The constant shish of cars
& buses became a lingering
rainstorm. There were moments
when the incessant clanging
bundled & surged
like a Beethoven
crescendo. Tap of boot
heels and stilettos in long

subway tunnels rolled back
to me as wind
& wave. I learned
to keep my eyes open, look
forward, reimagine dread. Flip
a nightmare
on its deafening
head.

I don’t research my genealogy
or cling to family artifacts — yet
I walk in graveyards, read the stones,
picture lives from earlier years, visit
antique shops, flea markets, a vanity fair,
imagine cooks, craftsmen, farmers
plying their tools, and sense the pride
they might have felt possessing
ceremonial and decorative objects,
and I am saddened by the reality
of impermanence, of forgotten dreams,
now for sale, and I think of my own cache

the faded snapshot of my paternal
grandmother who wears a long
gingham dress and holds a tiny kitten,
almost certainly a-wiggle

Mother’s china doll which I hate,
residing in a box labeled Lands’ End

Uncle Willie’s medal for rhetoric and history
awarded by Erskine College

the teaspoon of coin silver that bears
the tooth marks of my infant father

and I am overwhelmed by ties to the past.