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Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 786-787



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from Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 1996)

"Shack With Vines"

Patricia Spears Jones


Who lives in this motley house?
Some old woman left back of
the bottom of the county.
She's crazy, no, she's poor.
She makes her taste of something
as bitter as the broad leaves

choking the last of life from her house.

Where is her family?
Who was she as a young girl?
What did she do?
Go to church each Sunday.
Pull the yellow streamers during the Maypole dance.
Learn the first four chapters of Genesis
by the age of nine
Or was there not a family?
Did she nurse the folk of the county?
Is this the conjure woman, so talked about?
Or is the resident of this dying house, male?
Shotgun at his bedside, ready
to blast aside the wicked.
This is his sanctuary, this little house.
Away from the highway,
Far outside of town.
Far from the many temptations of the flesh,
about which he reads repeatedly in weak daylight. [End Page 786]
Or are there orphaned children sleeping
beneath blankets, coats, whatever warmth was left behind?
They remember electricity, hot showers, macaroni and cheese.
Scavengers in the town, their tee shirts, jeans,
and itchy, unwashed sweaters contour skinny backs.
There they are outside the fast food place
sifting through the leftovers, tossed
aside like an acidulent anecdote.

The shack collapsed.



© Patricia Spears Jones, October 1996; "Shack With Vines" is the title of a painting by African-American artist Beverly Buchanan.

Patricia Spears Jones is author of a play, Mother, and two volumes of poems, Mythologizing Always and The Weather That Kills. Her work has also been published in such periodicals as The American Voice, The Kenyon Review, The Black Scholar, Hanging Loose, and Journal of Southern Culture.

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