Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

A Wreath of Stars: Symsonia, Kentucky, 1914

J O E B O LT O N A Wreath of Stars: Symsonia, Kentucky, 1914 They’d caught me skimming cream off the top of the churn, So half that winter I had to go upstairs Right after supper without any dessert— No comb-thick honey Mamie stored in jars, No muscadine, no sunset-colored cake Sweetened with molasses, no piecrust plumped With apple or blackberry. Still, what made me ache The most was missing that music my brother thumped Out on his guitar while Pap’s fiddle whined Along like some hurt thing—like the bitch retriever Hung up in barbed wire for hours, who tried To eat me alive when I came to uncut her. I’d climb those stairs like somebody going to heaven Before he was ready, the loose boards creaking, then breathe On my frosted-over window till seven Cold stars shone on the dark sky in a wreath. * The night Pap and my brother didn’t come in For supper, Mamie told me to go ahead And eat their peach cobbler. We waited, then— I watching through my window while she read. And along toward midnight I saw two figures weaving Down the road: one tall and lean, the other 130 ❚ The 1980s Much the same, singing and carefully passing A thick glass jug between them—Pap and my brother. They must have saved a month to buy that whiskey. But leaning together, their sweet breath rising like clouds, One passed the jug, the other didn’t see, And the glass broke open on the frozen ground. They stared down at the spill as at a grave, Then at each other—with hatred for a minute; Then knelt down as though praying to be saved And lapped up every star reflected in it. The 1980s ❚ 131 ...