a little bump in the earth

The Matter of Things I’m telling you the plain truth. You would think a town with this many poor folks— peeling backyard potatoes was bitter bathed,  but getting off the pencil-colored bus my mama was waiting there laughing with the other mamas, with a thick piece of maple at her hip  for any carolina dog between here and where she’s covered my room with a thousand plastic stars.  We are citizens of their upstairs laughter & their I ain’t cryin’ tears carried to two jobs—  cleaning far away office buildings four nights a week. My house like everyone’s had a table to sit down some troubles. When the emptiness chose us we dumped out lonely in the river  like bad sugar wine, or hid ourselves in a wicker basket with the fish who like us learned to embrace  in death. You would think we desired to kneel over in the dirt of our slap board houses  but we greased our legs & went out into our yards & made them hot pink, purple & beautiful.  We scrubbed our houses like God was coming to get a plate. You would think  we didn’t have the time we bear to plant flowers and flour biscuits,  but every thumb here has had dough under nails & is a green that sends our uncles into prayer. We still gather near flames  because that all our grandmamas had, you would think we couldn’t kill a thing  but the deer ran into unpolluted woods, so did the squirrels, and the pitiful possums.  You would think we made the reddest devil horns when we hear the Lord's name out loud. Don't Say Love Just Signal no one said hawk we just looked at the sky in middle of a conversation  no one said when the melons were ripe they were thumped and listened to for a note we liked  a note like cane  no one had to tell the birds to eat the seeds we spit on the ground  no one had to tell the devil to make his rounds in his many forms with his many things  your mama my mama/my mama your mama we never had to say so until now because you feel more than far away you feel gone  we’d all wake up one morning and all the Jacaranda trees were blooming and no one needed to say a thing  we were having a good time & we were so alive we lifted off the ground a bit no one needed to call how we lived flying  & no one told us to come down we could do this for long time love like this beside our grandmamas  watching Bob Ross on TV make birds & bushes in her hushed living room  every summer a craft lesson no one told us was happening  no one said child write this down