This Is the Truth, Sugar
Odes to music, experience, and making the best gravy.
VALENTINE’S DAY TEAR-OFF
A break in the weather
brings the roofers hired for April
swarming over the house
like squirrels taking a bird feeder.
All day, a country station set to stun
pours out George Strait counting exes in Texas,
Waylon aiming to go to Luckenbach
for some firm-feelin’ women,
Ronnie Milsap worrying that Any Day Now
love will let you down,
desire shot through with heartache
like steak marbled with fat.
Fueled by cigarettes and gas station coffee,
the men chuck tear-off bars
under the old shingles and muscle them off,
roofing nails flying like popping corn,
asbestos raining into the shrubbery.
Willie, God love him, maybe didn’t
love her quite as often as he should have,
but David Allen Coe will stay around
as long as you will let him
and you don’t even have to call him darlin’,
Darlin’.
A honky-tonk wind shimmies the windows.
This is real, this is the truth, Sugar–
this is what can’t be said
face to face.
THE OLD GIRLS
We wear family history
on our crooked fingers:
the sapphire ring
Great-Grandma’s beau
gave her when he went to war
and never came back,
Grandma’s wedding ring,
made of Dahlonega gold
and big as a man’s
to fit her work-rough hands,
the diamond Daddy gave Mama
to apologize for so much
(too little, too late).
We drive our late husbands’
big old cars and park downtown
in loading zones and over the lines
when it suits us.
We taught the police
in school, bless their hearts.
We still cook in iron skillets
and make the best gravy.
Our biscuits are fluffy enough
to pad your bra with.
In our big purses we carry
band aids, face powder,
two shades of lipstick, hand lotion,
antacids, grocery coupons, shopping lists,
pocketknives, whiskey flasks,
hard candy, and nitroglycerin.
We’ve done the needful.
We’ve belled the cat, told the bees,
and, if our children were at risk,
showed up loaded for bear.
When anybody needed to straighten up,
we jerked a knot in their tail.
After what we’ve been through,
we’re content to watch our crime shows
and ballgames and let the dusting go.
And when we’re feeling slouchy
and nobody’s around,
we turn the radio to Outlaw Country
and dance like there’s no tomorrow,
which there might not be.
About the author
Elaine Fowler Palencia grew up in Morehead, Kentucky and Cookeville, Tennessee. Her latest book isOn Rising Ground: The Life and Civil War Letters of John M. Douthit, 52nd Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment(Mercer University Press). Her most recent poetry chapbook isHow to Prepare Escargots(Main Street Rag Press), poems about writing and writers.