Eatonton
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The eyes of marked cows reproach me in this motherland, when I am driven under the canopy of trees into town and our family of women try to escape him. You'll be back, he says, but for a time, I live with Mama and my sisters in the obligatory rented house, walk barefoot, ignore threats of lockjaw, dare to integrate the county pool, though soon I have it to myself. I cross the railroad tracks from the blackening edges, pass the county jail and striped men never fail to call out their innocence again and again. I let my grammar and my accent slide, finally learn the ways of folk, that a hard head makes for a soft behind. So don't answer the phone ever, and come here, girl to my mother's side, and don't believe a smiling man's words, especially when he makes me a lasting bargain. I want to remain in this rusty earth place, in the circle of a yard with snakes licking in our blackberry patch and nothing scares me one bit. There's cobbler every evening after dinner. I hold onto the funk of neckbones and greens.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is author of two books of poems, The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State University Press, 2000) and Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan University Press, 2003). Some of her new work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, and the anthology These Hands I Know: Writing About the African-American Family. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and a book review editor of Callaloo.
