Sister J’s Home Cookin’ Helena, Arkansas

POSTED IN contemporary poetry May 2, 2013

 

Sister J’s Home Cookin’ Helena, Arkansas

Sister J prayed constantly for remembrance,
said “What he want?” all too often. She worried
them all. Even when she smiled, said hello
to all the folk sittin’ at the tables, she worried them.

Eggs need salt only once.
Butter needs cuttin’ only once.
She made a finger-mark in flour to count it.

She could bake the pies, hand-memory
waltzing to years of dough and spice,
but her shirt, sweat-stained and ripe,
made her doctor furrow-browed with
concern when all he wanted was grits,

and coffee a warm brown caramel color
of the local river, not black-mud thick
ooze of its thirsty bank.

And so she prayed. With her grand-daughter
and her daughter’s grand-daughter. She
was gettin’ fuzzy-headed and tangled
as the Spanish Moss hanging off leafless
roadside trees, their branches husked
and waiting for the end of a long winter.
She feared even the echoes of her everyday
would not let her see the spring.

T’aint no memory for that.

by TOBI COGSWELL

USA