~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Juliet Hinton

Calvary Baptist Church

Tucker Bay Church, March 1947, New Augusta, MS

Its white blocks were built

for country white souls

praying away to Jesus

on a Jerusalem dark night

in New Augusta, MS,

half century away from my youth.

A cotton field truck had brought

the blocks out to where the church rose.

It had a two room Sunday school,

one for each gender,

except on those sultry calico nights

when the church women

fanned themselves to keep

their precious Lord in

and the devil away.

It was there, children rang the bells

for singing and worship

that sounded like courtship invitations.

Yet while the sermons were fiery,

they never quite burned

hot enough to stop the raging boys

eager to invite the girls

to supper on the church grass,

chicken and dumplings and a spread of deserts

on a barbed wire table

for these last suppers.

Jesus never tasted so good.

Spiritual Mother

Beaumont, MS, 1979

On my birthday, I was thinking of Co in

in the wooden pew holding me,

listening to the sermon turn dark

as the preacher pounded on the pulpit

in the enclosed space

of the rectangular sanctuary.

Years before, a white baby on the red, apron-covered lap

of one amidst the independent spirit,

iron willed, and determined black face,

tender, calloused hands a comfort and security

in the storm and tumultuous waves.

Doors opened to let in my spirit. This day in my youth,

I saw Jesus, that dark skinned Galilean.

The light so bright streaming in

the almost windowless building.

Memorial fans with the personalized faces

cooling the churchgoers in the late summer.

The women swaying to their cardboard fans,

Co triumphed spiritually and guarded,

saved one of those lost babies

in Egypt and Herod’s Nazareth.

 Antique Pink Dress

New Augusta, MS, April 2005

In my antique pink, maid of honor dress,

I was a soup kettle mixture of emotions

as I assisted my friend slip

into the hoop skirt and underclothes,

her ruffled skirt over it as her beaded blouse slipped

over her pounding heart.

Last of all I placed her mother’s veil

on her head.

Emotions were high, the harder she cried,

the harder I prayed the ceremony would be over soon.

The happiest day of her life drug on

as a funeral procession of her dreams dying.

On the first day of her marriage,

she would have clearer vision

of what true love did not consist of.

She was wooed by a lover

but ended up wed to a bickering

man, who dragged her over

the coals of his hellish wrath

everyday. She swore

he brushed his teeth

with brimstone and swallowed

half of it. He ate her hope

like a dragon did trees.

How she managed to stay

married to someone so vile

amazed half of New Augusta.

The other half prayed he would

be eaten by a panther or

shoot himself by accident

in the deer stand, the closest

he would ever come

to the pearly gates.