~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Linda McCauley Freeman

 Images of Louisiana

It was the moon shining.
It was my new husband telling me to look
at the stars. It was trees weeping Spanish
moss, and magnolias. It was iron balconies
forged like lace, broken bottles, beads,
and Hurricanes. It was my mother-in-law
baking biscuits, my brother-in-law’s fish fry
and Boudin Balls. It was my father-in-law
fast-picking bluegrass on his guitar,
the Mississippi log cabin he was born in,
the overalls he wore even to our wedding.
It was the ditch in front of every house,
the rising heat and mosquitoes, the insecticide
trucks my husband said they chased as children,
inhaling poison in big gulps. It was the old
photo in the album, of my mother-in-law
and a small, scowling child, my husband,
in front of the Laundromat. It was the sign
on the door behind them, clearly visible:
Whites Only.

You Brought Okra into My Life

I push through the lush green leaves we planted
from seed, now bounty, discover slender Okra
camouflaged against stalk, a child’s game
of hide and seek, pick the ready for gumbo
you will make tonight. I did not know
these tastes before. You brought this Yankee
girl home, fed my senses in your heat.

Tonight, you will thicken the roux
in your mama’s cast iron pot, stir
her love into your vegan gluten-free version
just for me, make the skillet cornbread,
juggling weight and heft. I will set
our table with cloth napkins and fine china,
light candles. A symphony will drift
through the room like the scents
in the kitchen, as you serve and fill
my heart.

The Room

The room grew, emptied, and grew again,
gathered voices, mostly hushed, then suddenly
one would rise or cackle. People sat, stood,
clumped, passed through. I’d ask my husband,
“Who is that?”— the man in the corner,
collar buttoned to his throat; the big woman
with large rings tapping her nails against
her phone’s smooth surface, swiping pictures
of her grandbaby to show me, though he sat
beside her fully grown; the gnarled woman
at the edge of the pew staring straight ahead;
the one sporting a starched beehive hairdo—
and he would shrug. He hadn’t lived here
in such a long time. Maybe his brothers
or sisters knew. A loud man came in
and started reminiscing about Betty Lou,
and my husband listened but didn’t approach
him. Everyone else talked of anything else.
She was the alien in the room, the thing in front.
Avoided. Eyes averted. Except for poor Jackson
who gathered all his seven years and the hands
of his mama and yaya to approach what had been
his mamaw. We visited, then visited again
the photos pasted on posters I’d made with my
sisters-in-law the night before: the mama we
knew and didn’t—a sassy woman leaning on a car,
a snarky girl with blond curls, a new mama
clutching her chubby and dimpled son—
my husband—happy before his brothers
and sisters were born. “Which one,” she
would ask him when he complained,
“should I send back?” His daddy, not in sight
even then. There were flowers to examine
and the relief of seeing our friends, Robey
and Denise, always our salvation on our
annual trip south to see Mama. Her children
and grandchildren talked about work and
chased or cuddled the babies. The preacher
talked about Jesus.