Miss Marguerite's Blueberry Jam

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• Miss Marguerite's Blueberry Jam
• Shannon T. Smith (bio)

Miss Marguerite say she grow up hard,say she a sharecropper's daughter, niece, granddaughter.Say when her momma die, her daddy bring her to his sister,cause he wouldn't know nothing about raisin' no girl children.Say one time she got oranges and raisins for Christmas.Say she know what picking cotton do to hands.Say soft and white as it look, it got all that blood in it.Say she was getting too big for that shack,so, she say she went and found herself a man,but say she had to take her babies and run North,not for fear of lynching or crow, or nothin like that,(although she say they'd string you upif you even look 'em in the eye)but on account of that man's hands.

Say she found somewhere full of folks with thatsupposed Appalachian indifference,and say she found some work, but it wouldn't do.So, Miss Marguerite buy her a batch of blueberries,boil em down with lemon to cut through all the sugar,and a dash of something she say don't tell nobody(say she only telling me cause me and her spirit agree).Say she sell what she could and give a jar here and thereto anybody who ain't had no sweetness in a long time.Say she make a name for herself, and a life for them childrenjust like Black folks always do—making something sweetouta something so, so blue. [End Page 101]

Shannon T. Smith

SHANNON T. SMITH is a Jamaican poet currently living in Japan, where she teaches English. Her poems have appeared in Susumba's Book Bag, sx salon, Sand Journal, Interviewing the Caribbean, The Caribbean Writer, and the anthology New Voices (selected by Lorna Goodison, Poet Laureate of Jamaica, 2017–2020). Smith was shortlisted for the 2018 Small Axe Literary Competition, as well as the 2020 Edward Baugh Prize for poetry. Her debut poetry pamphlet Sandbound, is forthcoming with New Walk Editions.

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