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Full
Moon Night
(For
Rudy)
By Jeannette Drake
Lord, they say
the man's "cool . . . unruffled."
Opposite sides of earth waiting
for him to steal a moment
of relief,
but Lord, You know
down here
we in trouble, serious trouble
and I don't mean just sweating Baptists
singing over and over how we got ovah
or old men too weary to sing the blues
all them too in those snowbound Alaskan
woods where deer and moose used to play
and babies' lips and fingers turning
blue,
no milk to drink and dried fish now gone
too
and in Western Province, South Africa
where bare-skinned tourists stay while
miles away
black boys scratch garden dust and pray
for rain. Hey Lord, I know you hear me
'cause
I still got peas and carrots, chicken
and dark chocolate too, if I want it
and I know You know
I give thanks.
Still Lord, We
All We
All We need your mercy,
Have Mercy, Mercy Lord, Have Mercy
in my momma's words,
this is all I ask.
©
Jeannette 2-10-09
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Tribe
By Jeannette Drake
now i belong somewhere
outside the weeping,
outside the third life of grange
copeland
i'm birthing
inside the communion of the dead
the living August
fire of my native tongue
i, too, sing of thee
wine's turning to water
a cup, a river, an ocean
i'm walking across the bones,
bones, bones, bones,
oh hear the words
of the bones
rejoice they say
rejoice!
©
Jeannette Drake 1-23-09
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At Last
(For Bigger)
By Jeannette Drake
i tried to catch his tear
cup it into one corner of canvas
impossible brush strokes
muddied the waters
danced into hills and valleys
darker than midnight down in cypress
swamps
sounds of Sam Cooke
talkin' change, no more nickels
and one thin dime, chimes, rhymes
with somewhere to play this time
"at last I understand," the boy said
years before beyonce became a star
and now there is somewhere to be,
somewhere to belong better than
the fire last time,
God of our weary years,
you still hang
around.
©.
Jeannette Drake 1-21-09
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My Secret Valentine
By Jeannette
Drake
Your skin is the color of mama's
though she insisted we call her Mother,
the proper way she said.
Your skin is the color of marigolds
she tended in the backyard,
the color of lemon chiffon
she piled in a bowl,
the color of custard
under white meringue she whipped for a
pie.
Your skin is the color of homemade
butter
she stirred into cake batter
we sopped with sticky fingers
from wooden spoons,
the color of crushed pineapple
she layered between coconut.
Your skin is the color of ruffled
organdy
dresses she stayed up all night to sew,
the color of Easter eggs
she hid in the grass.
Your skin is the
color of sunrise on Sunday morn.
©
Jeannette Drake
Poem first
published in Xavier Review,
Volume 17, Number 2, 1997
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Daughter of Abraham
By Jeannette Drake
"You don't have nothing to do with
that," my father says
when I tell him, "God's not fair."
Daddy is
old now, leathery, brown jaws
sinking closer to his frame, gentle
hands that held books, turned pages,
opened doors for me,
plump,
like yams.
On the Sabbath,
he still rises early to sing his praises
and plucks no corn.
When the sun goes down
he goes in the kitchen
and bakes me a
sweet potato pie.
©
Jeannette Drake
Poem first
published in New Virginia Review
Volume 8, Spring, 1991
* *
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Palette
By Jeannette Drake
Her head resting against the malignant
white
of the hospital pillow, she chooses
colors.
"Bury me in rosy peach?" Mother asks.
"And just a touch...not real
red lipstick." A reminder.
Of what I'm not sure. Still,
I unwrap the present I've brought.
A sketch pad. Colored pencils. A small
gum eraser.
The nurse interrupts. Time for lunch.
Lettuce and tomato, baked potato,
braised halibut
with lemon. "No grapefruit or oranges
back then,"
Mother schools me. "Only at Christmas."
I open the top drawer of the nightstand,
shut my gift of supplies inside.
Back home she has separated
the needles, threads, and thimbles;
packed
remnants of dotted swiss, voile, and
yellow organdy.
In a shoebox, clippings of me and my
sister,
our bangs, Dixie-Peached and Saturday-
straightened
in Miss Nancy's beauty shoppe; hot
combs,
the quick pop fry of a water drop
just missing a lobe of our ears. Later,
the slight rattle
of a pot; collards, steam escaping,
odors
assaulting our noses; heavy stroked
promises
of the next day's delicacies,
real as Mother standing
in the backyard years earlier,
her hands holding a cocoon
up to sunlight, "This will
be a swallowtail
butterfly."
©
Jeannette Drake
Poem first published in
The Southern Review October,
1992, Vol. 28, Number 4 |
