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Manners Tilt Country

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.

Published in Poems Rodney Terich Leonard

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