One Stop Spotlight: Patience Ray

Sometimes it amazes me the people that I meet here in the blog world. The world flattens a bit as you go online. One click you are in Africa, another you are in the Netherlands. It opens the door indiscriminately to those that have talent or otherwise. The lady I am highlighting today does not lack in the talent department.

I met her through Willow's Magpie Tales. You may remember the spotlight I threw on Willow (Tess Kincaid) a few months back. Patience Ray is a storyteller and a marvelous spinner of words. She does not post often, but each week I look forward to visiting Looking Both Ways, because to read her poems and stories is quite the treat. I know you will enjoy them as much as I do. ~Brian

Abandoning Birds

She rakes
alone,
broad-backed woman,
a blue bucket,
plastic bloom,
at her side.

She keeps
company with birds.
Behind her, they arrange
themselves, a brown flush
at her heels,
a feathered train.

She moves
her tool, metal teeth,
through the ripping grass,
holding the handle,
her arms, brown tendons
which lift, pull, lift pull.

She plucks
the piled leaves
from the ground
with a fleshy hand,
gold earrings quivering
as she bows,
the birds a riot of wings.

She lowers
her rake,
pronged appendage,
to gather the wooden
backbones of popsicles,
a silver flash of wrapper,
two mauled wads of gum—
one pink, the other white.

She stands,
bucket filled,
to watch the other women
sweep, their backs bent
and abandons her rake, the birds,
for a broom.

On My Mother's Side

On my mother's side there is whiskey,

an Indian woman with a white man lover.

They say they were joined at the hips,

with seven dark-eyed babies sleeping

in the same room they made love in.

He wrapped her up in high-waist skirts,

high-neck blouses, white, like his skin.

But the old steeple churches

spat her out—she was still too Cherokee,

walking barefoot into town,

a black braid slithered down her back,

singing with her wild, deer tipped tongue,

hips moving, deep woods and birthing

in her stride—the reverend said no man

would marry a red devil in a God-fearing town.

So she went home with her pale man

to their Carolina mountain—he

gave her gold rings for her ears,

one for her finger—she kissed him

with her sweet grass, sage brushed lips.

On my mother's side there is whiskey,

an Indian woman with a white man lover.