Broomcorn

The old man spreads the cold congealed meat gravy onto a slice of bread
And slakes his grease hunger as he slides again to times of his youth.
He removes his tee shirt and turns the AC colder, swabbing the stinging sweat
From the creases of his loose skinned neck, feeling an itch he’d thought long scratched.
Broomcorn itch - though so slight he barely recognized it.
Like corn but for the evil of itch and schoolboy-hand-ripping by green saws -
This the remembrance that brings on a shudder and tight-closed eyes
As he envisions grabbing the serrated flag and the handful of green tubes
That constitutes the ripened inflorescence that constructs the straws
That stiffen in the blazing sun to get swept up to be threshed into sweepers.
The boys strip them down, gather and interpolate to inner furrows laid out tanning
For a second sweep with lanyard looped for sheaving up ideal-waisted
Hour-glass straw women stacked on the octaves to await later pickup
From the boys they met the last swath swept to ride the bumping flatbed to
The threshing stack as owners dread mildew-making midsummer showers.
And on some days, the heat and humidity and the chemistry of the seeds
Seem to seek the seams of the boys’ super-heated margins and
Attack overburdened immune systems with proteins bred in African wilds
Why? Sorghum chemistry’s purpose to perpetuate misery of the already overtrodden
Who then were thankful for the sixty-five cent/hour wage that would buy a burger?
Swollen eye slits and scabs from night-time clawing is a sorrow but there are more tragic,
Like the propensity of the thresher to chop hands off nice young boys
Who lose the advantage of strength and tenacity to make a way in the world,
Leaving them to embrace the dull alternative of academia and deanships
To the proud profession of pouring paltry earnings down the hole of farming.
So the city dwelling oldster strolls to the store and spurns the plastic bristled brooms
And wonders about the tincture of green still on the straws and the ragged terminus
Of the preferred natural straws and wonders what a half century of
Mechanization might have dealt to the process he knew better than he wanted to.
At home he sweeps the street dirt out, wondering if boys still suffered so.


Truck

Lairpin’ truck, Sal,
A praise for the garden crops,
Not the beaten up pickup.
Greens and roots and reds and yellows
Flashing early summer’s bounty.
Who’d thought – "let’s feed ourselves -
Grow our own?"
Maybe Cain, but many didn’t, couldn’t, didn’t think to -
Not even a tomato.
The bounty eaten from summer’s field and stashed for winter -
Snap beans and fresh pinto beans and dried pintos -
The same for black eyes and crowder and purple hulls and cream
And corn on and off cob – elotes and creamed in great pans
Fixing a taste never even hinted at in cans or from sweet corn –
Field corn transformed to food for folks making their own -
Not to be had by outsiders who don’t feed themselves.
Only two kinds of people in the world not eating okra-
Them that’s stupid and Yankees – oops - one
Africans do and Indians – served at the grand hotels of New York.
One man’s slime another’s texture.
Melons busting, dislodging heart, being ripped open and gutted
For a sugary wet burst
And mush, musk melons golden and sweet like rich ice cream
Greens and summer crossing each other out,
Finishing spring and waiting for fall
Lettuces and cabbages waiting for November’s cool
Cucumbers and eggplants almost making it through summer,
But the red jewel, juicy and meaty drips all the way
And nothing is better than homegrown tomatoes
Then the calabashes – summers and winters
Kershaws and pumpkins, crook necks and disks
Back to spring for tubers – done by May
With the golden roots and purple
And sweet potato jumping to fall
Dug with the peanuts
But the main thing – grown by us – our own food.