An afternoon with Kevin Young’s “Aunties” sounds awfully good right now. The poem,
An afternoon with Kevin Young’s “Aunties” sounds awfully good right now. The poem, from his collection Dear Darkness, appears most recently in Blue Laws, a selected and uncollected gathering that is an essential tour of Young’s work.AuntiesThere’s a way a woman will notrelinquishher pocketbook even pulledonstage, or called upto the pulpit— there’s a way onlyyour Auntie can make ittaste right— rice & gravyis a mealif my late Great Aunt Toota makes it—Aunts cook likethere’s no tomorrow & they’re right.Too hotis how my Aunt Tuddie peppers everything,her name givenby my father, four, seeing her smiling in her crib.There’s a barrelfull of rainwater beside the housethat my infant father will fallinto, trying to see himself—the bottom—& there’s his sisterMargie yanking him out by his hair grown longas superstition. Never mindthe flyswatter they chase you round the house& into the yard withready to whup the daylights out of you—that’s only a threat—Aunties will fix you potato salad& saveyou some. Godmothers, godsends,Aunts smoke likeit’s going out of style— & it is—make even goldteeth look right, shining, saying I’ll beJohn, with a sigh. Make wayout of no way— keep the keyto the scale that weighedthe cotton, the cane we raised morethan our share of—If not them, then who will win heaven?holding tightto their pocketbooks at the pearly gatesjust in case.More on this book and author:Learn more about Blue Laws by Kevin Young.Browse other books by Kevin Young, including Stones, forthcoming in September 2021.Hear Kevin Young read poems from the first pandemic year, along with other contributors to the anthology Together in a Sudden Strangeness, via Left Bank Books on April 19.Share this poem and peruse other poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link. -- source link
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