~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Jianqing Zheng

Street Dance

—Eudora Welty’s "Dancing for Pennies"

A barefoot boy with a straw hat,

rolled-up sleeves and pantlegs

thumps the drumhead of a tambourine

to attract the ears and eyes of passersby.

He knocks its frame rhythmically

against his left-hand palm, slaps it

against his knees and thighs, and shakes

it up and down or left and right to make

the jingles chime into a sunshine

dance for a burst of claps. He smiles

shyly, as if he’s not dancing for pennies

but for a moment to delight himself.

Flying High

—after Eudora Welty’s "Boy with His Kite"

Light wind, the fledgling

flaps his young wings

to soar into the sky

as blue as his delight.

This is his first try

to see the land from the sky.

Wings spreading,

his dream starts to swing.

Black Street

—after Eudora Welty’s "Black Street, New Orleans"

The photograph frames a plain townhouse

with double undercut porches. White sheets

and aprons hanging on clotheslines make it

look like a riverboat with nautical flags.

The building has two open entrance doors.

A man in a suit and fedora is about to step

into the right door. There are also two women,

one scrubbing a bedsheet on the washboard

on the lower porch, the other standing

on the stairs as if talking to the washer or

waiting to hang up laundry. Both man and

women show their backs to the camera.

But my magnifying glass finds the feet

of two more people almost unnoticeable

under a bedsheet clipped on a clothesline

in front of the other door. Eudora’s focus

must be the eight kids playing in the yard

covered with gravel and sparse grasses.

A little boy rides a tricycle and a big boy

runs to the left side to catch a ball in the air.

Other kids, in twos and fours, chat or

practice tongue twisters. A girl alone

on the far right seems to have blond hair.

None of them, young and old, are black.

Are they immigrants? Does the name

of the street sound ironic to Eudora

when she snaps a shot there? If she walks

for fifty yards in either direction, will there

be a different view of black life? I move

my magnifying glass for a second look.

Jianqing Zheng has lived in the Deep South since 1991. His recent poetry collection is The Dog Years of Reeducation (Madville Publishing, 2023). In 2022 he published a haiku e-chapbook titled Delta Notes. Email: jqzheng2003@yahoo.com