Aunt Honeybee’s Bread Board
Making biscuits turns everything into a song of praise, lament, and uncertainty.
All movement is music.
She flings flour onto the board
the way she feeds chickens—
light brush strokes on a snare drum.
She inverts the jelly glass
like a silent moo box,
twirls the rim in flour,
its petticoat showing between
the press and release of each
biscuit.
Dough between cutouts
lifts in one piece,
the sticky remains
of an empty postage stamp book.
Not to waste, she plucks flour
off the board into skillet grease.
Gravity-fed water cascades
a raspy jazz over the board,
powdery as a moth wing.
She tilts one end
to strum the surface clean.
Spun like an upright bass,
front and back are dried
with a new 1971 calendar towel.
I am not sure I still belong
after a three-year tour in a foster home—
so few of my letters answered,
no guarantee I would return,
no biscuits and gravy.
She hangs the rustic board
against the wall on a big nail
like a crucified thief’s hand.
About the author
Hilda Downer is the author of four collections of poetry, including Wiley’s Last Resort. She holds an MFA from Vermont College and is a longtime member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative, the Appalachian Studies Association, and North Carolina Writers’ Network. A retired psychiatric nurse and English instructor at Appalachian State University, she lives outside of Boone, North Carolina.