~ Delta Poetry Review ~

A Frozen Peach Beneath The Hot Texas Sun

We wandered Grandmother’s land
like big game hunters on safari,
familiar danger lurking in unsuspecting corners.
Rattlesnakes, possums, stray dogs.
Stout chinaberry branches
served as weapons of choice.
Everything was for climbing—
trees, sheds, hillsides,
roof—if Grandmother was busy elsewhere.
Long, bleeding scratches were
payment for sweet blackberries
lining barbed wire fences.

There were frozen peaches in summer,
put up alongside peas and beans
and corn from the garden.
Fresh peaches don’t last,
Grandmother said.

As if frozen peaches lasted
with four hungry children
digging out hard, sweet pieces
on breaks between forays
into the wilds of neighborhood farms.

Chickens kept the yard
clean of everything but poop.
Good fertilizer said Grandmother.
She killed one every week for Sunday dinner.
Placed its head between two boards
and pulled.

We watched blood splatter,
propelled by a spinning,
headless bird,
wings flapping in wild frenzy.
Then final collapse.
Sudden stillness.
My introduction to death—
the stink of a big chicken
in boiling water,
wet feathers plucked from
a heavy, limp mass.

Not like the live ones.
Their little hearts hammered,
throats vibrated,
tough wire-feet splayed.

We learned to hold them
upside down,
harmless and limp,
still as death.

Not like the headless ones
Grandmother worked over with
quick sure fingers
that swelled and bent
years later, looking
like the crooked, gnarled feet
of dead chickens.

Cold and hard and sweet—
that’s what she was like.
A frozen peach
beneath the hot Texas sun.