Here, she said, put this on your head.
She handed me a hat.
You ’bout as white as your dad,
and you gone stay like that.
Aunt Sugar rolled her nylons down
around each bony ankle,
and I rolled down my white knee socks
letting my thin legs dangle,
circling them just above water
and silver backs of minnows
flitting here then there between
the sun spots and the shadows.
This is how you hold the pole
to cast the line out straight.
Now put that worm on your hook,
throw it out and wait.
She sat spitting tobacco juice
into a coffee cup.
Hunkered down when she felt the bite,
jerked the pole straight up
reeling and tugging hard at the fish
that wriggled and tried to fight back.
A flounder, she said, and you can tell
’cause one of its sides is black.
The other side is white, she said.
It landed with a thump.
I stood there watching that fish flip-flop,
switch sides with every jump.
Today’s rhyming quatrains are brought to you by the residing Poet Laureate of the United States Natasha Trethewey, from her 2000 collection Domestic Work. For more on the experience of growing up bi-racial in Gulfport, Mississippi, pick up a copy of Trethewey’s Native Guard — one of the best poetry collections I have ever read.
And if there’s another poetry book you’ve been meaning to pick up, take advantage of Powell’s Books 15% off all poetry — that’s any selection from the five centuries and five continents we’ve touched on in poem-a-days this month, but only during National Poetry Month. Or find Trethewey and all sorts of other treasures in the American Poetry (811!) section of your local library.
I’ll meet you there,
Ellen