Photographs Not Taken (I-277 North), 2022
We been living under the I-277 just South of Church Street and East of the 85 for almost 20 years now.
Me and Savannah was babies at the time, and big muma was just that
our big muma.
Packed up our belongings one day, said we was gonna head up the highway - leave Cusseta, Alabama and all its mangled ways for one of them big cities.
Most of her other sisters went out west, but I suppose she had other dreams she needed to chase. But one day muma just stopped - offloaded our things, sold the car to a chop shop, and made camp under the highway.
We been here ever since, living in between here and there, someplace between coming and going.
Big muma hasn’t aged one bit, although the lights in her eyes done gone out. She just sets there in her chair, every hair in place looking just the same as the day we arrived.
But Savannah and me - we done grown - sometimes at night we set off to them big trees just across the road to get a better look at the highway and all those rushing cars, their tires making noises like the ocean. If I set long enough I almost feel like I’m moving too.
To speak of a lush hot blooded land, to the dispossessed, too busy to visit, 2019
He use to bring those pretty yellow flowers home on weekends when
he’d work long hours uptown at the jazz club. They were the kind my
sister Carrie said reminded her of the first time she laid eyes on Lina,
and those evening trumpeters she placed in her hair on their last night.
I’d sit by the window for hours, long after I’d put Junior and them down,
watchin’ as the street lights flirted with the curtains
while thinkin’ those thoughts.
Every now and then I’d get a whiff of that perfume Mama wanted sprayed
on her resting dress, so she’d still feel warm - like sandalwood,
newspapers and vanilla. Or the saltwater Papa always joked about
sending up, lest we forget we had a place to come back to.
Finally he’d round the corner, stopping briefly at the ol’ fruit stand before
entering the building and climbing the three flights to our apartment.
In he’d enter, kicking his shoes off at the front door, before whispering his
evening greeting which nowadays sounded more like a dispossession than
the first few notes of a hymn.
The tale of his arrival, 2019
It was always the last Sunday of the month when she'd send me.
I know because Ol' Man John
who was always tighter than Dicks hatband would show up.
He was always whoopin' and hollerin' about how men down here were
only good for coming up six bricks short of a ton when the rent was due
Mama would come out onto the porch in her yellow apron,
always on cue, to tell him that the lord didn't need to hear all that rukus -
not on his day!
Ol' Man would always shoot back some slick line about Mama's mouth
being as big as a bell clapper and he'd be off faster than you could say
Jackie Robinson, leaving only the tracks of his canary red Sunday shoes
and a trail of black pepper to bear the tale of his arrival.
Aqueduct (despite the bend), 2019
We would all load up into Garfield’s white RV on Saturday mornings,
just as the sun began to play its game of colors alongside the old calvary church
down on St Johns place.
The way all those bits of color shifted reminded me of that time down home
when all us chil’ren would run out to the river to find the pocket change we
overheard Miss Amanda telling Aunt Louise she’d thrown in for luck.
Funny how time pass and we still here banking on luck.
Instead of fishin’ round in the soil for hard silver coins we ride out
to the 430 acres to place our bets on the thoroughbreds.
The river keeps running despite the bend.
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