We all have aunties, right? Some who dote on us. Others who pester us for thine kingdom come. Either way they are all part of our lives. And if you’re female and your sibling have children, you might actually be one. I like this poem because it reminds me how simple and gratifying the things in our lives can be.
Aunties
by Kevin Young
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. May way
out of no way––
keep they keys
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.
