Mona Lisa Saloy.
“Word Works.”
I’m about how words
work up a gumbo of culture,
stamped and certified African,
delivered on southern American soil.
In my word house,
we spit out articles and prepositions
like bitter chewing tobacco.
We lean on words that
paint pictures of galait
and grits and good times,
sittin’ under gallery shades,
sippin’ lemonade,
wearin’ the afternoon
like a new dress.
This, my birthright,
gives a sense of place
that gets under your skin
like a swamp leech or a good story
out for blood.
The region gives you toast
or beignets with jam.
The R & B, Blues, Jazz, and Reggae rhythms spice
Saturday-night suppers
and street parades,
when the Grand Marshall
leads the Second line
after a funeral or
any good excuse to party
where umbrellas dance.
Folks all colored
from pale and yellow
to midnight blue-black
never just stand back and watch
they gon’ say it how they see it
how they feel,
’bout everything and then some,
from roaches to do-rags,
from daddy-do right
to David Ku-Klux Duke,
to sisters wringing
the barest budget for another meal.
So, here’s a taste,
begun in a roux,
sauteed in lines like
“Trust a man as far as you can see him,
cause you know,
stiff stuff don’t have no conscience”
Sista Sarah said.
She had nine kids
and three grand kids,
didn’t look a day over 40.
Said she was preserved because
“she left the fun box in and
took the trouble box out.”
Then Hebert cut in from the curb,
and fun was all he heard.
Said he was
“the women’s pet
the sissy’s regret
and the whore’s lollipop.”
And Sista Sarah said well
“pass the bread, cause
that’s baloney for true!”
So, call this a Crescent City mambo,
of days in peopled streets,
or nights in low-lighted clubs
on boulevards,
where passers-by pale and bloom
like days-old irises or azaleas,
the places where neighborhood front porches
and side galleries stand vigil
for tall talkers
and pass-the-time rappers,
here, in my house,
a crescent city mambo in words.
This Poem is for You My Sister
(for Barbara Ann)
Still eight years my elder
I remember clutching your circular felt skirt,
me, all snotty-nosed and wanting your rhinestone sweater.
I remember wishing to follow you
to the zoo or the record shop
and being told to skip rope
or dream little Black girl dreams
of Saints, Voodoo Queens, or Guardian Angels.
But you fed me Brooke Benton,
Dinah Washington, and Ella Fitzgerald as appetizers.
At 10, I was drunk on Nat King Cole,
Coltrane, and Miles Davis,
and my spirit would never be measured in years again.
One fall, you ran from jim crow, left for Seattle,
our room full of your rose hips sachets,
your old green leather jacket,
and the straight skirts I had no hips to fill.
My life, shaken without you,
was empty like a finished Barqs root beer.
I wore loneliness like
your hand-me-down skirts.
When the record player screeched,
I heard your voice — hey girl —
between Johnny Mathis melodies:
“When Sunni gets blue
She breathes a sigh of sadness
Like the wind that stirs the trees. . . .”
Your face faint, floods me
with your Tchoupitoulas smile,
thick black braids,
never aging in your high-school photo.
After mother passed, and brother joined the Marines,
and Daddy drank his memories sour
and stale as day-old beer breath,
I wanted you to answer my anger,
to wipe my tears dry with a sock hop or
a backyard barbecue.
So I followed your memory northwest, over Cascade mountains
and Suquamish tribes.
I heard mother’s voice:
“You mind good now ya hear.
You mind your sister good, now.”
You, mother of a son,
wife to a man who believes love an unidentified emotion,
tenderness, a foreign conspiracy.
Each season of mail a burden like horror,
the hell on his shoulders leaning on you like a sawhorse.
Your hands are the color of gentleness and pacific sand,
your breasts broken with years of curses cold as frostbite, and
our prayers melting each scream like fudge.
So sister love dipped in golden seal, mouthfuls of carrot juice and holy water,
broke the pain of those years like a finger snap or a joke.
This poem is for you my sister
with your Tchoupitoulas smile,
your jet black braids, that round bottom like mother’s,
and your ankles that swell with the rain.
Still eight years my senior,
time peels away.
Kiwi fruit memories stay with alfalfa seeds sprouting friendship
and globetrotting; and as we skip across Caribbean beaches or Pacific shores,
we swim among warm crowds.
Your eyes sooth me
like the Guardian Angel of my childhood dreams.
We are masked in love
and mother’s smile.
This poem is for you my sister
with your Tchoupitoulas smile,
your jet black braids,
that round bottom like mother’s,
and your ankles that swell with the rain.
My Mother’s the Daughter of a Slave
an early generation of free city-Black women,
New Orleans, 1907,
when jazz honked and tonked dives
in the Vieux Carré and uptown.
She was jet black, and she was happy.
Never knew she was cute
till a high-yellow nigger named Louie came ’round.
Called Mother pretty black, almond eyes,
street-light bright.
I never knew her grown.
She said, “live good bébé.”
She passed in ’66,
knew everybody for blocks,
and they came every night for two weeks
to pay last respects.
Stood single file for two blocks on the banquette.
From sundown to starlight,
they came they said because they remembered.
Said she always had a wink, a smile,
and time to listen, or make big fun, or help, or be.
Always said, “live good everyday;
it’s all we’ve got.”
And they came they said
because they remembered.
She was jet black, and she was happy.
Never knew she was cute
till a high-yellow nigger named Louie came ’round.
Called Mother pretty Black,
almond eyes, street-light bright.
I never knew her grown. She said,
“live good bébé; it’s all we’ve got.”
Southern Sisters
There’s a way
crescent city woman,
downtown brown sisters,
put a face towel
on their shoulders,
sweat rags for summers,
when it’s hot enough
to melt toe cheese
on the banquette.
There’s a way N’awlins women,
brick-headred sisters,
carry a ’kerchief
through long tan fingers;
it’s like
the hand that fans you.
There’s a way crescent city sisters
throw a wink
with a wide smile.
So good,
makes you want to kiss yo’ mamma, yeah,
makes you want to kiss yo’ mamma, yeah.
There’s a way the home
of hucklebuck women
tip a hat to the side on their heads
and strut — all dressed up to kiss —
like queens of the ebony isles.
makes you want to kiss yo’ mamma, yeah,
makes you want to kiss yo’ mamma, yeah.
Louisiana Log
(For Bob Kaufman)
Land south of the Mason Dixon, of Gulf waters and Mississippi tug-boat sighs
Land of cane, rice, & watermelon (jungle plums), po-boys, patios, patois, pecans, pecan pies, pralines, and papier maché masks
Place of Oak-tree swamps, pine & cypress with hanging grey moss punctuated by peacocks and pirouges
Land of Creoles, Cajuns, Black Indians, cawains, mud-bugs, catfish, and bayou crooners
Region of hot, wet air, heavy with hurricanes, honeysuckle Irish hash, and Haints
Land of Black-faced Zulus, Louis Armstrong, river dragons, and Griots, grits and gris-gris with Loup Garu sunsets
Zone of cock fights, absinthe, tafia, anisette, and gospel groups, congris, and gravel sidewalks
Land of dreep-fried fritters, the boot state, trying to keep its head afloat, the long-lake state, the polluted Ponchartrain, the tooth-fair state, the koon-ass state, the red-pepper state, the home of Tobasco Sauce
The U.S. precinct of Mardi Gras and street parades with great flambeaux and marching bands, the best in the south land
Home of pelicans and cranes, roaches a finger long that fly and face you at sun-up
Climate of smiling eyes and hand shakes and great hugs and southern how-dos, when everyday’s a come-on-out-of-the-thundershower day
Longitude of lagniappe, yeah-you-right, and star-lit nights
Meridian of courtboullion and hush puppies, gumbo and deathless days, everyday hallelujahs, crayfish bisque, praying in tongues, novenas and graveyard gifts of lilies, silver dimes and bamboula
Tropic below sea-level, of Scorpio and Saint Joseph salutations, people who parade, paint faces and forearms like iris’ & demons
Domain of bayous levees, canals, alligators, Bogalusa and wrought-iron fences
Neighborhood of Voodoo good luck and yam crops and mis-believes, the pass word is party, and umbrellas dance
Latitude of Leprosy and soy beans, clover and jasmine, mildew, and dead moss
Vicinity of sidewalk cafés and boulevards, preachers and priests with cathedrals of Saints’ bones and Atchafalaya
Soil of courtyards and river blues, Professor Longhair piano riffs, Zydeco, and Rosaries on Wednesday nights
The Mahalia Jackson and Fats Domino belt, where the Saints come march, where you find your thrill
Terrain of cotton and fire flys, bumble bees and cats, tiger-striped to Siamese in alleyways and garbage heaps of oyster shells and shrimp leavings (there’s more cats per square inch here than most states)
Department of Big Chief, café au lait and beignets, galait, and cous cous & milk
Sphere of Classical & Dixieland Jazz, R & B, bayou blues with Baptists, Catholics, and the Ku Klux Klan with Jazz singers and souls crying
State of Chocolate City #10 with fortune tellers and spiritual healers, wall geckos, muddy water, and missionaries
District of sweat and shade, The Second Line, Mississippi moon-lit nights, Saturday night
suppers in the back yard, the sanctioned speakeasies
Confines of Thibodaux, Tchoupitoulas, Houma, and Louisiana Red in wing tips
Nativeland of jive and jambalaya, the Crescent City — the city care forgot and remembered, “for true.”
I Had Forgotten The Loud
laughing locusts do at night,
the smell of hot grass
steaming under end-of-summer rain.
Hurricane Elena was prayed away from New Orleans
by Holy women, Haints, and Loas.
Hurricanes, thecrescent city crusade,
like bayou music from Allen Toussaint,
the R & B basic brew:
“Hey there sugar-dumplin’
let me tell you somethin’. . . .”
from King Floyd or Irma Thomas,
who used to be called colored singers,
or chitterling-circuit crooners.
New Orleans leaves a honey taste in my mouth.
The cracked boulevards and weeping willows
shade bare front porches
and call her children home.
I holler, “Hey-now!”
Come southern grown, like
mirliton and magnolias.
Daddy’s Philosophy: II
Daddy loves coffee with chicory
in his cream and sugar
every morning just after 5:30.
Says he eats to keep from
getting hungry.
At 86, he forgets
when and what he eats
especially Hagendaz on a stick,
can inhale one after another with
a smile like sunshine
while peeling away
the plastic wrap.
He sees me watching,
says that’s what it means.
What? I ask.
La joi de vivre, he says.
The joy of life? I ask.
Sure, the New Orleans motto, he says,
the reasons for heavenly hips,
drumstick thighs, and
hug-able bellies.
Yeah, ya right,
even the French say that Daddy.
No girl, not like we do.
“We work like we don’t need the money.
We love like we never been hurt.
We dance like nobody’s watching.
We eat like there’s no tomorrow.”
Works
Saloy, Mona Lisa. Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems. New Odyssey Series. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Pr., 2005.
Saloy, Mona Lisa. Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems. New Odyssey Series. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Pr., 2014.
Page prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee