Mona Lisa Saloy.
“This Poem Is for You My Sister.”
© Mona Lisa Saloy.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
(for Barbara Ann)
Still eight years my elder
I remember clutching your circular felt skirt,
me, all snotty-nosed and wanting your rhinestone sweater.
I remember wishing to follow you
to the zoo or the record shop
and being told to skip rope
or dream little Black girl dreams
of Saints, Voodoo Queens, or Guardian Angels.
But you fed me Brooke Benton,
Dinah Washington, and Ella Fitzgerald as appetizers.
At 10, I was drunk on Nat King Cole,
Coltrane, and Miles Davis,
and my spirit would never be measured in years again.
One fall, you ran from jim crow, left for Seattle,
our room full of your rose hips sachets,
your old green leather jacket,
and the straight skirts I had no hips to fill.
My life, shaken without you,
was empty like a finished Barqs root beer.
I wore loneliness like
your hand-me-down skirts.
When the record player screeched,
I heard your voice — hey girl —
between Johnny Mathis melodies:
“When Sunni gets blue
She breathes a sigh of sadness
Like the wind that stirs the trees. . . .”
Your face faint, floods me
with your Tchoupitoulas smile,
thick black braids,
never aging in your high-school photo.
After mother passed, and brother joined the Marines,
and Daddy drank his memories sour
and stale as day-old beer breath,
I wanted you to answer my anger,
to wipe my tears dry with a sock hop or
a backyard barbecue.
So I followed your memory northwest, over Cascade mountains
and Suquamish tribes.
I heard mother’s voice:
“You mind good now ya hear.
You mind your sister good, now.”
You, mother of a son,
wife to a man who believes love an unidentified emotion,
tenderness, a foreign conspiracy.
Each season of mail a burden like horror,
the hell on his shoulders leaning on you like a sawhorse.
Your hands are the color of gentleness and pacific sand,
your breasts broken with years of curses cold as frostbite, and
our prayers melting each scream like fudge.
So sister love dipped in golden seal, mouthfuls of carrot juice and holy water,
broke the pain of those years like a finger snap or a joke.
This poem is for you my sister
with your Tchoupitoulas smile,
your jet black braids, that round bottom like mother’s,
and your ankles that swell with the rain.
Still eight years my senior,
time peels away.
Kiwi fruit memories stay with alfalfa seeds sprouting friendship
and globetrotting; and as we skip across Caribbean beaches or Pacific shores,
we swim among warm crowds.
Your eyes sooth me
like the Guardian Angel of my childhood dreams.
We are masked in love
and mother’s smile.
This poem is for you my sister
with your Tchoupitoulas smile,
your jet black braids,
that round bottom like mother’s,
and your ankles that swell with the rain.
Works
Saloy, Mona Lisa. Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems. New Odyssey Series. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Pr., 2005.
Saloy, Mona Lisa. Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems. New Odyssey Series. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Pr., 2014. © Mona Lisa Saloy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Page prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee