Praise poem for a grave tender

by drea brown

There is a woman i love who makes promises 

to the dead. washes their bangles in florida, holds

rosary. her tongue a bell, their names holy come 

down. this one, wears her grandmother’s face like 

a cameo locket. As if revived from clay and 

alkaline. As if a haint, was making peace again 

with flesh. this one, knows a city’s cracked 

black palms, and like any good chiromancer, can 

read its heart. she is more than seven generations 

deep in blackland prarie: clarksville robertson hill 

masontown mancheca. she can find a great grand’s 

hearthstone in gentrified rubble in wheatsville 

waterson fiskville hayden springs, or the path 

across a thumb’s fading crease. show you 

gregory town and red river dusted feet, post oak 

savannah, all from memory. all else is alluvial. 

there is a sparse marked site where calloused 

ground hold somebody’s people. stones remain

in need of tending. greedy mosquitos, slumbering

coiled rat snakes. mind the eggplants at the gate. 

praise for the caretaker bearing pink carnations 

graveside. Dried chamomile and wild lavender

praise for the bottle tree beloved who believes

asé is any and everywhere. i am telling you 

this is a woman of wind. She wears her people 

on her face. ancients swell in the black of her 

mouth they rumble up from the earth and juba 

they wear her feet until tired and certain. 

nothing pulses like the thirsty moribund. Not

even rain. except perhaps, the dutiful hands