Aunties by Kevin Young

Aunties

 

There’s a way a woman

          will not

relinquish

 

her pocketbook

          even pulled

onstage, or called up

 

to the pulpit—

          there’s a way only

your Auntie can make it

 

taste right—

          rice & gravy

is a meal

 

if my late Great Aunt

          Toota makes it—

Aunts cook like

 

there’s no tomorrow

          & they’re right.

Too hot

 

is how my Aunt Tuddie

          peppers everything,

her name given

 

by my father, four, seeing

          her smiling in her crib.

There’s a barrel

 

full of rainwater

          beside the house

that my infant father will fall

 

into, trying to see

          himself—the bottom—

& there’s his sister

 

Margie yanking him out

          by his hair grown long

as superstition. Never mind

 

the flyswatter they chase you

          round the house

& into the yard with

 

ready to whup the daylights

          out of you—

that’s only a threat—

 

Aunties will fix you

          potato salad

& save

 

you some. Godmothers,

          godsends,

Aunts smoke like

 

it’s going out of style—

          & it is—

make even gold

 

teeth look right, shining,

          saying I’ll be

John, with a sigh. Make way

 

out of no way—

          keep the key

to the scale that weighed

 

the cotton, the cane

          we raised more

than our share of—

 

If not them, then who

          will win heaven?

holding tight

 

to their pocketbooks

          at the pearly gates

just in case.