Cornbread and Strawberry Jam

Hot buttered cornbread
Straight out of the oven
Strawberry jam spread
On top before eaten

Practicing and study
Gifted student’s program
Curtain covered doorway
Flooring old faded linoleum

Worried Red furry dog to guard
Her people and the puppies
in the yard.
One beautiful white cat dies,

Replaced by twelve black as a bat
follow up and down the road
Woman only missing the hat
the broom and the green toad.

Mailman places Welfare check
In beat up old green mail box
Each month, but what the heck
No where to go, living in the boondocks

Taxi cab trips to town
Food stamp line to stand
With people black and brown
Proof of poverty demand

Story books, this word pronounce it
What’s wrong with this picture?
In front of Black and white TV sit
Watching cartoon literature

Holy Roller verbalization
Jehovah’s Witness at the door
Expounding revelations
Invited in to sit and tell more

Guitar music playing
Jesus songs sung in church
Purple wisteria twisting
Around the front porch

Circle of houses
Sandy drive way
Lined by Pecan trees
Plenty of room to play

Me maw next door handy
Cokes in the refrigerator
Country store full of candy
an ice-cream truck vendor

Drunken man fries fish
Placing them lovingly
With pride on a dish
Serving his imaginary family

I see visions of my daughter
Blurred by time and a teardrop
Eating buttered cornbread
with strawberry jam on Top.

© Jacqueline Alexander

Jest

Lilly and Rose bloom in Spring.
fool hesitates, waits
Funeral wreath drapes coffin.

©2005 Jacqueline Alexander