Teahouse of the Almighty (10 page)
pink foam rollers in thin, hard-oiled strands.
It is northbound Greyhound, shucked beans,
buttercake, chicken necks in waxed paper,
trapped against their own oil. The voice belongs
to the m'dear of red dust, to our daily dying mothers,
to every single city's west side. It wears aged lace
and A-lines hemmed with masking tape.
The woman wails sanctified because the heat
has singed her fingers, because a huge empty
sits across from her and breathes a little death
onto the folds of her face.
I'll take another cup,
she says.
I believe I will. But don't be scared,
Glorie, make it hot. Put some fire under it.
Lord can't tell I'm here âless I holla out loud.
She rocks the day dim, sips slow, props the comma
of her spine against the hard wood. But she snaps
straight whenever the door opens.
He's gon' come.
He knows the place.
A man gets thirsty.
for Louis Brown, Boston
I blew out my speakers today listening to Aretha
sing gospel. “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”
crackled and popped until finally the tweeters
smoked and the room grew silent, although,
as my mama would say,
The spirit kept kickin'.
Humming fitfully between sips of spiced tea,
I decided that salvation didn't need a soundtrack.
Boston is holding its breath, flirting with snow.
Upstairs, plugged into
M.C.
somebody, my son
is oblivious to headlines. The world is a gift,
just waiting for his fingers to loose the ribbon.
He won't find out until later that a boy with his
face, his swagger, his common veil, died crumpled
on a Dorchester street. He will turn away from
tonight's filmed probings into the boy's short stay,
stutterings from stunned grandmammas,
neighbors slowly shaking their heads. He'll pretend
not to see the clip of the paramedics screaming
obscenities at the boy's heart, turning its stubborn
key with their fists.
Want anything, Ma?
he'll ask
from the kitchen, where he has skulked for shelter,
for a meal of sugar and bread to block his throat.
The crisp, metallic stench of the busted speakers
reminds me that there are other things to do.
My computer hums seductively.
My husband hints that he may want to argue about sex.
I think about starting a fire, but don't think I can stand
the way the paper curls, snaps, and dissolves into ash.
So I climb the stairs to my son's room,
rest my head against the door's cold wood,
listen to the muffled roars of rappers. But I don't knock.
He deserves one more moment of not knowing that boy's face,
how I ran to Aretha's side, how tight the ribbon is tied.
for Otis Douglas Smith, my father
The recipe for hot water cornbread is simple:
Cornmeal, hot water. Mix till sluggish,
then dollop in a sizzling skillet.
When you smell the burning begin, flip it.
When you smell the burning begin again,
dump it onto a plate. You've got to wait
for the burning and get it just right.
Before the bread cools down,
smear it with sweet salted butter
and smash it with your fingers,
crumple it up in a bowl
of collard greens or buttermilk,
forget that I'm telling you it's the first thing
I ever cooked, that my daddy was laughing
and breathing and no bullet in his head
when he taught me.
Mix it till it looks like quicksand,
he'd say.
Till it moves like a slow song sounds.
We'd sit there in the kitchen, licking our fingers
and laughing at my mother,
who was probably scrubbing something with bleach,
or watching
Bonanza,
or thinking how stupid it was to be burning
that nasty old bread in that cast iron skillet.
When I told her that I'd made my first-ever pan
of hot water cornbread, and that my daddy
had branded it glorious, she sniffed and kept
mopping the floor over and over in the same place.
So here's how you do it:
You take out a bowl, like the one
we had with blue flowers and only one crack,
you put the cornmeal in it.
Then you turn on the hot water and you let it run
while you tell the story about the boy
who kissed your cheek after school
or about how you really want to be a reporter
instead of a teacher or nurse like Mama said,
and the water keeps running while Daddy says
You will be a wonderful writer
and you will be famous someday and when
you get famous, if I wrote you a letter and
sent you some money, would you write about me?
and he is laughing and breathing and no bullet
in his head. So you let the water run into this mix
till it moves like mud moves at the bottom of a river,
which is another thing Daddy said, and even though
I'd never even seen a river,
I knew exactly what he meant.
Then you turn the fire way up under the skillet,
and you pour in this mix
that moves like mud moves at the bottom of a river,
like quicksand, like slow song sounds.
That stuff pops something awful when it first hits
that blazing skillet, and sometimes Daddy and I
would dance to those angry pop sounds,
he'd let me rest my feet on top of his
while we waltzed around the kitchen
and my mother huffed and puffed
on the other side of the door.
When you are famous,
Daddy asks me,
will you write about dancing
in the kitchen with your father?
I say everything I write will be about you,
then you will be famous too. And we dip and swirl
and spin, but then he stops.
And sniffs the air.
The thing you have to remember
about hot water cornbread
is to wait for the burning
so you know when to flip it, and then again
so you know when it's crusty and done.
Then eat it the way we did,
with our fingers,
our feet still tingling from dancing.
But remember that sometimes the burning
takes such a long time,
and in that time,
sometimes,
poems are born.
COLOPHON
Teahouse of the Almighty
was designed at Coffee House Press, in the historic warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis. Fonts include Perpetua and Scala Sans.
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