Southern Hospitality
Grits with cheese, black eyed peas,
Honey with toast, Sunday roast,
Preacher comin’, cornbread stuffin’,
Chicken and dumplings, stomachs are rumbling,
Grandma’s duster floats in the breeze,
Backdoor open makes me sneeze,
Linoleum crackles, hot summer days,
Taking me back to a Sunday in May,
Wish I could go, just one more time,
Hear the dinner bell, smell the pines.
It was all right there in my childhood dreams,
Taste the love and visualize the scene.
I appreciate it now, I want to go back
I realize now, nothing did I lack!
**
Wendell
Your teeth were the first
Thing I noticed about
You.
Large and gleaming, spaced
Out as your life had been.
Funeral parlor shenanigans;
Your diatribe entertaining others
Incessantly.
Humor dripping from your
Stories of hiding in caskets
Jumping out as other embalmers
Walked by.
Days when undertakers drove
Black ambulances with red
Rotating lights.
Picking up the sick; their emergencies
Sometimes real, sometimes not, they
Just needing your time and attention
In this small, boring town.
Martha Kate whom you lifted
Up from her soiled place
In the bed, roaches scurrying
Under covers unlaundered
For weeks.
And you, Wendell, retreating to
The front porch boxwood to
Throw up bile and vomit
Your stomach turning at her
Sight and smell.
As days rocked by on funeral
Home time, your stories collected,
Remembered and shared at
Family gatherings.
You, our source of rural Sunday
Afternoon entertainment
Stories I should write down
Wendell, and bind in a
Book sharing with others
Not remembering customs
Like sitting up with the
Dead and kissing their
Cold cheek before the coffin’s
Final closing.
Maybe one day I’ll sit
With you and record your
Life Wendell and you
Can tell me about heartbreak
And divorce, death, and dying,
Grandsons going off to war,
And how you were able to
Laugh in the face of tragedy
Healing your wounds licked
Dry by life’s sharp tongue.
**
Aunt Sadie’s House
In the pines of middle Georgia,
Bolstered by brick pillars
My walls whisper
Boys’ ancient laughter
They came for cat-heads and gravy,
Sneaking from the ‘white folks’ house,
I am hostess of their magical escape.
Splintered walls now crumble,
Pieces of the past,
First cries of birthed babies,
Last gasps of dying breath,
Distressed moans of strapped backs
Whisper in my dark,
Portraits on stained ceilings,
Framed by burnt chimneys.
I once held life
In these rooms
Roof patches and windows
Turned away the rain
Now splashing in
Welcoming nesting creatures and
Four seasoned weather.
My strength is fading,
I do not know how long
I will stand.
But if you listen to
The flapping shutters and softly
Crumbling stones
You will hear my story.
