by Tara M. Stringfellow
my mother
was ten when she got her first black eye
some white man at the counter of a North Memphis
deli fixed her with a square jab that sent her flying
off her stool, ketchup adorning her
mother’s head in a blood crown
my mother was inconceivably calm
among the chicken bones on the floor
still as a stone wall
mustard in her hair
while whites screamed at her to go back
to the Memphis zoo
she knelt there on her hands
and knees and tried to breathe
fought the blackness seeping into her vision
the dizziness trying to overtake her
she said she mouthed the Lord’s prayer
this woman asks me for anything,
anything at all,
I give it
Tara M. Stringfellow is a poet, former attorney, Northwestern University MFA graduate, and semifinalist for the Fulbright Fellowship. She has written for Collective Unrest, Minerva Rising, Jet Fuel Review, Womens Arts Quarterly Journal, and Apogee Journal, among other publications. After having lived in Okinawa, Ghana, Chicago, Cuba, Spain, Italy, and Washington DC, she moved back home to Memphis, where she sits on her porch swing every evening with her hound, Huckleberry, listening to records and chatting with neighbors.
Photo by Andrea Morales
From Magic Enuff. Published by Penguin Random House