Summer Apples by Cathryn Essinger
I planted an apple tree in memory
of my mother, who is not gone,
but whose memory has become
so transparent that she remembers
slicing apples with her grandmother
(yellow apples; blue bowl) beer than
the fruit that I hand her today. Sll,
she polishes the surface with her thumb,
holds it to the light and says with no
hesitaon, Oh, Yellow Transparent . . .
they're so fragile, you can almost see
to the core. She no longer remembers how
to roll the crust, sweeten the sauce, but
her desire is clear—it is pie that she wants.
And so, I slice as close as I dare to the core—
to that lile cathedral to memory—where
the seeds remember everything they need
to know to become yellow and transparent.
Scrapple by Afaa Michael Weaver
It was cousin Alvin who stole the liquor,
slipped down Aunt Mabie's steps on the ice,
fresh from jail for some small crime.
Alvin liked to make us laugh while he took
the liquor or other things we did not see,
in Aunt Mabie's with her oors polished,
wood she polished on her hands and knees
unl they were truth itself and slippery
enough to trick you, Aunt Mabie who loved
her Calvert Extra and loved the bright inside
of family, the way we come connected in webs,
born in clusters of promises, doed
with spots that mark our place in the karma
of good mes, good mes in the long ribbon
of being colored I learned when colored
had just given way to Negro and Negro was
leaving us because blackness chased it out
of the house, made it slip on the ice, fall
down and spill N-e-g-r-o all over the sidewalk
unl we were proud in a new avenue of pride,
as thick as the scrapple on Saturday morning
with King syrup, in the good mes, between
the strikes and layos at the mills when work
was too slack, and Pop sat around pretending
not to worry, not to let the stream of sweat
he wiped from his head be anything except
the natural way of things, keeping his habits,
the paper in his chair by the window, the radio
with the Orioles, with Earl Weaver the screamer
and Frank Robinson the gentle black man,
keeping his habits, Mama keeping hers,
the WSID gospel in the mornings, dusng
the encyclopedias she got from the A&P,
collecng the secrets of neighbors, holding
marriages together, pung golden silence
on children who took the wrong turns, broke
the laws of geng up and geng down
on your knees. These brile things we call
memories rise up, like the aroma of scrapple,
beauty and ugliness, life's mix
where the hard and painful things from folk
who know no boundaries live beside
the bright eyes that look into each other,
searching their pupils for paths to prayer.