Y is for Young

Poetry Foundation

I was going to post something by W. B. Yeats but when I went browsing the Poetry Foundation website I found Kevin Young, and I rather liked this one because it contrasted so beautifully with Aunt Julia from day M.

Aunties

There's a way a woman
          will not
relinquish

her pocketbook
          even pulled
onstage, or called up

to the pulpit -
          there's a way only
your Auntie can make it

taste right -
          rice & gravy
is a meal

if my late Great Aunt
          Toota makes it -
Aunts cook like

there's no tomorrow
          & they're right.
Too hot

is how my Aunt Tuddie
           peppers everything
her name given

by my father, four, seeing
           her smiling in her crib.
There's a barrel

full of rainwater
          beside the house
that my infant father will fall

into, trying to see
          himself - the bottom -
& there's his sister

Margie yanking him out
          by his hair grown long
as superstition. Never mind

the flyswatter they chase you
          round the house
& into the yard with

ready to whup the daylight
          out of you -
that's only a threat -

Aunties will fix you
           potato salad
& save

you some. Godmothers,
           godsends,
Aunts smoke like

it's going out of style -
           & it is -
make even gold

teeth look right. Shining
          saying I'll be
John, with a sigh. Make way

out of no way -
          keep the key
to the scale that weighed

the cotton, the cane
          we raised more
than our share of -

If not them, then who
          will win heaven?
holding tight

to their pocketbooks
           at the pearly gates
just in case.

And, because I had intended to have more videos during the challenge and not really looked, here he is reading the poem:

(Linking back to the A to Z challenge)