|
"Across the road in the family graveyard the clay appears turned over and over in piles”
Across the road in the family graveyard the clay appears turned over and over in piles,
Cool, warm at the heart, a perfect September morning.
See the doors to the academy open, the scholars filing in, referencing, cross-referencing.
Do you enjoy yourself in a crowd?
I do-the din of doors shut and a noise-level any suspect smells.
The dirt road in front of my house, now paved, zoom-zooms.
I know you’ll find someone and that someone may be me.
July’s in a document, signed, sealed, and delivered.
There is a long line of mourners right now crawling along in black cars,
Their lights on, grievers feeling there is no place in the world to go to.
In old Mexico I traveled once.
I fell in love with Maria, her dark skin and hair, and those Spanish eyes!
Someone said you said, “Can’t you see I am dying.”
You wouldn’t want to live through that again.
You could say how you walked to school with your dinner in a bucket.
You said this place would be “ours” some day.
Your greatgrandpap George “owned” slaves.
First grade, Miss Apple: “SHELBY, put on your thinking cap.”
The cards that read The Greatest Mom on Earth!
I feel so good I could holler.
Three crows fly out of the dogwood in the graveyard.
The milk clabbers in churns.
The mules push their necks into the fence.
You said when we got down to the slick pages
Along about December it was rough.
Those ads! The image of the hunter, foot propped up on a box of Winchester
Shotgun shells, what service for long meditations.
The dogs lolled in their yard.
Blow your horn all the way to Four Oaks.
Let those foxhounds moil!
Shelby Stephenson's Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize, Allen Grossman, judge. The poems appearing here are from a book-length manuscript called Paul's Hill: Homage to Whitman.
Web Site
Email: Shelby Stephenson
Return to Table of Contents
|
