Punch

In a circle of folding
chairs, the church women settled,
having come from town
for my mama’s punch.

Among them, I
waited too, feet dangling,
thirsty, having long before
been kicked out of the kitchen,

where she still stirred and poured
to please these women
who suspected both
her beauty and her birthplace.

Don’t ever tell, she told me,
as I watched her
scrub the bucket, the only thing
she had to hold so much.

I could not resist: “Miss Nola,”
I whispered, “Mama
mixed the punch in a bucket.”
The room turned

on her, framed in the kitchen doorway,
offering a crystal bowl
full of sweet, green drink,
her eyes on mine.

Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Volume 29, Number 2, 2016, page 91