Berryblack Blues, and: Loving the Dark, and: Generational Curses, and: The Uprooting, and: Re-membering Kin

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• Berryblack Blues, and: Loving the Dark, and: Generational Curses, and: The Uprooting, and: Re-membering Kin
• Shanna L. Smith (bio)

BERRYBLACK BLUES

For Crystal

I'm in love with old-people words,their memories blowing out at me in riffslike slow drags tolive in-person, up-close kind of blueswhere their faces sweattilted up like remembering God.

I squeeze into spacestoo longto listen,catch a wordof rememoryfrom them—a recipe for hard-won living.

That slow drag of a cigaretteand diphthong vowelrounding their lipsanticipates my hearingas they improvise memorywhile patiently strokingsquat green glasses of whiskey.

I've learned to waitfor muttered-beneath-the-breath talesof Black boyhoods loaded into pickup trucksto strip tobacco;or only-once-told rumors ofBlack girls bartered away for a pint of liquor;about Big Mama wringing chicken headsto feed her berryblack, amber, and butterscotch children.I listen to visualize the Affrilachian hills, knobs, and junketspeopled with brown skin, poor folk [End Page 152] rich with hands that strung cane-back chairs,carved wooden vanity tables, pressedbiscuit dough between fingers,threaded needles through brocade,upholstered couch covers,and laid brick for homes that none of us now own.

The stories fill my mouth sourlyand becomes my mourning blues,then a healing balm refrainas I slap hard the tablewhere I sit among the cloud of witnessesthat crowd my memory—as they knew it would—and we laugh together, overtaken,improvising light into life's shadows. [End Page 153]

LOVING THE DARK

For bell

I am loving darkness,risk my lifeand daredance dusky hipsin the blueblackdarkness of us.

Blackfolk emboldenedby deep burgundy bruisesin our DNA that,when pressed down, explodea shout of joya keening waila roar buckledfrom the mournful, searing acheof holding up the whole worldin the spine of our work-worn backs.

I hurt for us,travailing in indigo inkpublished to cast lightto toxic shadowswe'd much rather leave eclipsed—exposing the beauty of when we,so beautifully black,be so blue. [End Page 154]

GENERATIONAL CURSES

For Gayl

We are tiredof waitingto birth generationscarrying usin belliespushedwith new life;

weary of pushingand coming up shitas our offspringmake homes of it.

We are exhaustedof lovinghardand gettingfucked.

We want babiespassing our stories.We want childrenspinning songs.We want youthcocky with spirit—

we want generationspassing us on. [End Page 155]

THE UPROOTING

Spirit-shook, I move againonto an unintended path.My belly groans in fearof these miles, a re-crossing into Mississippias Cassandra¹ croons a lulling verse—

"Traveling miles … crossing time … shifting (stars)traveling miles and miles"

Taking the journey though none go with me—not my family living other lives,not the books settling and housed in boxes,not the friends virtually visited,not the art, nor memoried heirlooms—the things that made me, me.No, not a one.

This path, resisted, is the expected onetrudging deep into our family's rememoryof Great-Granddaddy Carson's rumored rebellion:newly Knoxville College educated, andstudiously unmoved from whitened sidewalks.Black rage in pale Southern skinspropelled him hastily onto a late trainwith Grandmother Emma,out of the Deltainto the Bluegrass.Together they ushered a new beginningto the only homeplace three generations knew—a bourbon-trailed Louisville, Kentucky.Now I stumble back into place,Greenville.Who had they left behind? [End Page 156] The paths merge, theirs and mine,calling me back. Here.And I will bear it for them,the uprooted,the story bearer, chosen in the third generationto repair the ruptureof dislocated familyand this narrative of who and how and where we now are. [End Page 157]

RE-MEMBERING KIN

For Gilette

I remember for her, now gone,and the more than thrice-told talesof family lore she plantedlike veined verdant greensslow simmering in her potto serve gathered kin.The planting, the rich growing tale of...