Stewed turkey bubbling in a small kitchen
with curling wallpaper
and half a story about a rainy day
before the hurricane
but after Hopie got sick
and “nearly dead!”
A cantankerous dispute
and who and who lost the fabric
for Miss Mildred granddaughter school uniform
and why Bunny drink off all the money
and stink ah rum
and horse dead
and cow fat
“Anyway . . .”
Mama would continue
after starting in the middle
while grating coconut for the rice and peas
and slapping my creeping fingers away from the Dutch pot
“You too craven!”
And then laugh
Then the story would flow and morph
as we came and left the room
while she leaned over a bowl
kneading dough for dumplings
“And guess what happen? Would you believe . . .”
the story turned and meandered
like a river turning into sea
like the house in country
that was never finished being built
like the soursop tree I planted in the soon- to- be room
I loved letting the waters of her words carry me
there was always more to tell
and more work for busy hands
a bobbin to thread
a dress to hem
there was always more to tell
Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and communications strategist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of the poetry collections Gathering the Waters, Everything Is Necessary, and A Spell for Living, which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for Agape’s Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origins Literary Award. Anderson’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in national literary journals and anthologies that include Small Axe Salon, Kweli, Killens Review of Arts and Letters, the Langston Hughes Review, and Renaissance Noire. She has received grants or fellowships from Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Laundromat Project. She received the Poetic Icon award from her alma mater Syracuse University in 2021 and was selected as a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence in 2018. Her art has been exhibited at Billie Holiday Theater, Carter Burden Gallery, Five Myles Gallery, Weeksville Heritage Center, and elsewhere. Anderson holds a BA from Syracuse University and an MFA in creative writing from the City College of New York. Visit www.keishagaye.ink