Category: Rodney Terich Leonard

by Rodney Terich Leonard

In this house manners tilt country:

fig preserves faint on biscuits,

stop looking down my throat,

a child’s chair clear of grown-talk.

The patterns of two left feet,

six & seven-year hands,

cousins in the settled dust.

Black ants circle American

sweetgum & lightning,

plural of tock, loses

its temper & gongs

the jug’s metal dipper.

Grandma Viska—

Emma, Mattie, & Queen Esther’s mother,

frocks pink & black bonnets,

pulls heat & poison from wounds.

Wonder why

she morning-rakes

the front yard

with cloth-tied brush brooms?

Viska Martin Edwards

1889-1978

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

Copyright © 2021 Rodney Terich Leonard
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Rodney Terich Leonard

a seven-beat song

Bobo, Meat, Potato-Chip

Tootle, Choo, Pee Wee, Throaty

Nessa, Lumpty, Grease, Big-Man

Tuneya, Fattie, Bucky, Pie

Grit, Frog, Tit, Good Gooch, LaJit,

Spam, Bo, Red, Mighty-Mixer

Shell, C-C, Noodah, Knock-Knee

Weedy, Junebug, Lee Pap, Grip

Roll ‘em, Big-Boy, Poonie-Eyes

Boonty, Sistah, Beebo, Scoop

Dunchy, Bappy, Britches, Poot

Barefeet, Creesie, Tatty, Pig

singin

Sugar-Man, San-Nan, Popeye

Pokie, Scooter, Missy, Rell

Reesie, Haircut, Uptown, Hess

Baldy, Bad-Shape, Mr. Square

Sweetie, Shawty, Badfoot, Oont

Boochie, Bear-Mouth, Doll-Baby

Punkin, Pilly, Pudd’n, Kway

Redhead, Lay-Low, Mall, He-Stank

Bow-Leg, Bay-Boy, Dibba, Twelve

Meat-Skins, Fast-Ass, Dank, Low-Nuts

Lightnin’, TuShake, Bare-Mouth, Mimp

Pookie, DuShake, Milk-Leg, Simp.

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

Copyright © 2021 Rodney Terich Leonard
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Rodney Terich Leonard

The mannish way

my son phoned you

quiet legs crossed

funk in his drawers

six o’clock news on

pulls up my onions.

Each time I spit & cuss

each pour of Clorox

each Meals-on-Wheels

each quip of my name

—Willow Mae—

is hallowed gossip.

Weeks I smelled glory:

ham hocks & souse

honey buns & fatback

chitlins & hushpuppies

Pepsi & fried chops—

loves I lost my legs to.

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

Copyright © 2021 Rodney Terich Leonard
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Rodney Terich Leonard

An outhouse year.

Someone I love rips rags for tampons.

Someone I love speaks less & less.

Is the sky

ever too pink

to suggest you’re poor?

I am eleven—

having studied them

I introduce myself to Colonel Douglas R. and Jessica K. Smith

husband & wife

of Rockfords Golden Rule Market—

the Smiths of Asprey & Chanel

cashmere & city speech

of Beethoven’s italicized wonderment

I know because I asked

of Black-chauffeured blue Cadillac

& 2 Doberman Pinschers

guarding their brick Federal Colonial.

I am hired.

To neaten & clean,

to stock & cashier—

sometimes I pump gas.

On calendar-circled Saturdays

I utter Eames, rattan, Picasso

bone china, commissary, sparkle, miso

lacquer, Andrew Wyeth, linseed oil

poached, Shakespeare, Melba toast

duvet, Summer’s Eve, Harper Lee

salmon, invoice, Unleaded, Visa.

Slowly

I inch

my family away

from

government

milk & cheese.

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by Rodney Terich Leonard

My grandfather—

John Walter Edwards strummed the guitar

under a sycamore tree.

City trash-truck worker,

curer of thrushes’ problems,

brought directly to holder & folder of his wallet,

my grandmother, Mary Emma.

New to the rise of millennium-ripped questions,

memory is technological; it lurks & it forgives

dilution & tint—

I have some questions from all the grandchildren:

Were you atheist or agnostic?

In your sphere, God was nowhere?

Why the austerity, so few words?

Leo-born to tempt & deter—

John to wife,

Daddy to Catherine

Willie Doris, Ruby

Johnnie Mae & Mary

Elizabeth, Dezzie & Louise.

Mr. John

to weekend women

& back porch bathers—

lithe hummer

of anyone decisive,

you sucked raw eggs.

Intro to empty:

your mother’s portrait, above

a bed, straight-nailed to the wall,

& never a ringing rotary—

did without,

as a way of being,

heal anything?

Young sergeant of Grand Forks,

here the tall tan men are sun

& though private, I am no secret.

“Big Deddy,”

this legacy of amours & faulting

darts my tumult.

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

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by Rodney Terich Leonard

Midwife of scarce warmth,

Mrs. Wilson’s lamplight air.

Her cod-liver tongue, talcum bosom

& cursive note of thorny expectations:

Come see me when I can best assist.

Bring two, bleached sheets.

My fee in 1970 a hundred dollars.

Aretha’s “I Say a Little Prayer”

Salt & sautée my mother’s lilt.

Closer to thirty than strength,

I straddle a stool; Salem’s ashes

Flicked in hair-grease top

Fastened to roots, love & story.

It’s Thursday before Thanksgiving—

Each half-mile, (she walks to & fro),

The moon, a vat of pelvic threat.

Scheduled curls oil the world.

Baby between thumb & formula,

The same day catching her & stove

Singing mismatched ditties: Yams

Meatloaf. Before I put on my makeup

The moment I wake up.

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

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Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Rodney Terich Leonard

She of Ecclesiastes & cream-colored envelope,

the mother mails

to summer cousin—

cash, food stamps, regards:

Dear Shirley,

Your bosom is

a great big city, pink chenille

for other folks’ children. Six weeks of pillowed

nights to dream of freeways, malts & shortstop,

my son jumped off the sighing Greyhound belching Sunkist,

Patrina & Pea-Eye, his new bus-seat friends—

belief & noise stuck to his chest, yelling he’d thumbed

way back to basement-paneled Sixteenth Street Baptist:

Cynthia, Carol & Carole & Addie Mae—back to 15 September 1963

Child, came home chirping Five Points South,

UAB, Thirteenth Avenue North, Dynamite Hill,

Legion Field & Dr. A.G. Gaston:

Part of all you earn is yours to keep.

The truth is red:

Next to them that’s got shall get, I twitch.

You wear raven silk taut at the nape of the neck.

In wards of Pac-Man, Adidas, & Atari,

you ushered in this rattle of awe—

glorious Black Fever!

Glorious—

Yours,

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

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Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Rodney Terich Leonard

Father, 1959

Daddy loads, cocks, & aims his gun.

Four young girls & their baby brother

trace the woods

by mercy of the moon.

Briar-torn legs bleed a simpler truth:

no enjoying June today.

Ever smiled an alcoholic into

burying his flask & bully?

Probably easier to patty-cake with the sun.

Son, 1999

He tongues the last cubes

of Johnny Walker’s twist & trick.

Sleep rinses his eyes yellow-pain clear.

Own pail to pull,

bobby pin headed toward the eardrum,

the clack of dominoes,

bones on the table.

The twenty-year deal:

sober hell & jail at fifty—

alphabets to learn, son uttered strangely,

swallowed whole.

Ghosts

to shotgun

again.

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

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by Rodney Terich Leonard

a. (1997)

Arrival at twenty-one

cocks his tam sideways.

Deep-freeze nod

to alley deacons & white folks.

Terry Derell

strums corduroy-gray

acoustics.

Chlora is his tiramisu—

he’s indiscriminate

pot & vodka-cranberry wise.

b. (2012)

Maria Inés

backhanded the hurt—

hyena-laughing.

Common shoulders

glittered for night-prerequisites.

Eye sockets

house sass-glass.

Her Louboutin’s are hers.

Jazz is novel nectar.

Moon-swayed—she’s absosucculent.

c. (1974)

Snatched from

tight-eyed scribble,

water boils,

china shards scrape,

white kittens meow.

What night is this, Rodney?

Amid jumbo pencils,

red satchel & Crayola,

candy corn & wide-lined,

pee-wet paper,

my mama’s teeth

sweep the linoleum.

from Sweetgum & LightningFind more by Rodney Terich Leonard at the library

Copyright © 2021 Rodney Terich Leonard
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.