by Lori Lasseter Hamilton
Aunt Jackie’s Mississippi mud pie, Milo’s sweet tea.
Glory Foods’ sweet potato casserole.
Aunt Melody’s gooey macaroni and cheese.
Creamy butter and Sister Schubert’s yeast rolls
all bless Grandaddy’s Gadsden table at Christmas.
My mouth wants to devour this glorious South
but all the sugar and cheese, all the Milo’s tea, won’t wash away his bitterness,
Grandaddy spewing the N-word like Goodyear asbestos from his mouth.
Before we’d drive to Gadsden in the nineties, I’d sit at tables with Daddy.
Away at college, I say a Black woman will be my roomie in my beige dorm room phone.
Daddy spews and sputters, blusters curse-filled threats, says he’ll send the police after me.
I believe him, sirens from Pinson to Montevallo. I’ve never felt so far from home.
Daddy didn’t care that her gorgeous velvet heart gifted me her Ferragamos.
Her eardrums weren’t burst by his asbestos curses. I didn’t room with her. But she knows.
Previously published in Synkroniciti Magazine, Volume 3, No. 2, in June 2021.
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