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Rachel Edelman: Memphis Blue

November 17, 2015 by PBQ

“Dis here Memphis

It may go;

Floods may drown it;

Tornado blow;”

Sterling A. Brown, “Memphis Blues”

 

Susie knew how to get her FEMA check.

She’d already called the hotline the day after the flood

before we brought over the Shop-Vac and got the fans going.

Her grandkids were upstairs:

Derek on the couch with his PSP, the toddlers scooting

toy trucks around their playpen.

In the basement, she had my brother take pictures of the busted pipes and drywall

and she checked each one to make sure he’d caught the cracks just right

so the drywall looked like a melon wrinkled rotten.

She printed the photos at Walgreens

packaged them with assessments and affidavits

and mailed them First Class.

 

My mother worried about the mold

and insisted on taking care of Susie’s new carpet and curtains

until the check came in.

Meanwhile, Susie still came in through the back door in the mornings

and heated up the last splash of coffee in the microwave

before she got to work.

She washed our sheets

and ironed creases down the legs of my blue jeans

while watching Days of Our Lives.

She carried our laundry up the stairs,

nursed her arthritis,

and hummed along to the gospel station.

 

Sitting with her as she folded clothes,

I tried not to love the harmonies crying out to Jesus Christ!

whose followers, I’d heard, considered me

unredeemed for overlooking the First Coming.

Jesus was the only figure

whose roots ran under the whole city.

They praised him in the bus depot and in the antebellum plantation homes

and their songs for him came out of the old radio

like earth out of muddy water,

as if his trees rose up with the help of a squinting old woman

pumping the organ pedals

shaking her head in time

 

and getting up at the end of the song to stand on the land arisen

only there’s no land, just a pulpit and a man

and a sea of women standing out in front of him, holding hands.

Filed Under: Contributors 92, Issue 92, Poetry, Poetry 92 Tagged With: Contributors 92, Poetry, Poetry 92, Rachel Edelman

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