These five poems by Dayna Hodge Lynch explore the connections between Black Southern cultures, grief, love, and the significance of community in life…
by: Dayna Hodge Lynch
Porch Sitting and Veneration
Coming from a long line of people
from distant lands
mimicking mountains across states
To curves of the piedmont, I am theirs.
Renewal of spirit and body under carports and
sitting on porches
In warm summer sun
Brown skin glistening
The frogs leap in too tall blades of grass
Cardinals carrying their qualities in rekindling
daylight’s power as it fades to make room for the moon.
Support of central sounds
Grasshoppers weave their bodies to make their love sound fierce,
familiar of the countryside that taught me
Conversation coaxing out lore of those who have said,
“that baby’s been here
before.” Shots of pineapple moonshine, stars also thrown back
Throats not cleared of the night’s first chill
We weave in and out of laughter luck and tears watering the gossip,
News, psalms and salves made to heal us
Our tongues tethered to syllables not quite
Craving completion but finding the
Community in Neighbors coming in rotation
Honoring those that went before by
Keeping their names and stories in the atmosphere
Miracles found in the breeze
I wouldn’t have it any other way
The cicadas are going to emerge this year without you
Embracing the memory of you
Having tried every vice at least once
Hopeful to quell the lodged aching in my larynx
Tethered to promises and “I love you’s” I no longer say
Made by muscadine vines wrapped around
Dilapidated fences over on Hughes Dr.
Sun rises no longer hold the same light with a new day
Neither do I
Circles of exhaustion rimming my eyes better than any kohl
Chipped purple nails bitten to the quick
Charity made a hostile home in casual breaths in longing of yesterday
Streams of sungolden dogwood orbs falling, as tears
Line intricate etches of invitations to the ancestors
Please let me know you’re alright.
Never Take a Wooden Nickel
“Never Take a Wooden Nickel,”
Deddi Warned
My skin remembers the tethers tilling to
Sharecropping under 100 degree
Sweltering Sun North Carolina
Not yet one generation from
My Deddi
The wayward one to be
“I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams”
And meant to be indigo clothed from
Down by Charleston
Where the haint can’t make merry
Because they’d never be able
To touch us
We wear the charms meant to protect
And serve our Black bodies more than any
Police force could, our community
Meant to complete our family
Today I wonder why hogmaws and chitlins can’t be seen as a delicacy to anyone other than us
Why people wear grills and yet think they’re mouth hasn’t been adorned by our culture
My body remembers the trauma of the ancestors we could not place
Talented tenth could never take me make me
I wonder why people can’t feel the plantation’s hold to spirits never meant to be there
Sometimes I question whether Badu’s mama’s gun was the same as my sister’s
Don’t we have the same idea of dreaming?
Sweet love and red pearls
Before girls became too tantalizing for a shoulder in dress code
Before she was hurled words by strangers
she didn’t even know the meaning of but she witnessed it in her body
That she didn’t likethewayshefeltwhentheysaidordidthosethings
My sister taught me how to fight just in case
“Put your keys between your fingers like this just in case”
The baby blue acrylics traced the steering wheel cover
“don’t let nobody take your power”
Honoring the way my sister applied her roll on
Hair Store lip gloss with the purple plastic rose
After telling me my life’s motto…
“I guess nobody ever told you
All you must hold onto, is you.”
Obsidian
To be from magic-filled sugarcane sharecroppers
One generation back
To have my hands look like nothing
my ancestors could
conjure everything
No callouses to help feel the marshy moss
grows to tell which direction to go
To not know when harvest time is
To be able to tell the difference
between collards and kale on first glance
To make a remedy for a cough
with things from the garden
To hear “you look like....”
From people who know my own family
When I don’t.
My mama's family came from the coal mountains
near the Tug River a few states up
“You look like your mama but just darker.”
In the summers grandma didn’t want me
staying out in the sun too long
“You’ll get darker like you would’ve been
in the mines just like your granddaddy”
unlike the rest of the family, my daddy
solidified my darker than paper-bag skin
My 4c hair tumbled and twisted almost as much
as my tongue attempting Patois I
overheard my sister-n-nem sayin’
Dayna Hodge Lynch is a Black femme poet from North Carolina. Dayna received her B.A. in English from Loyola University of New Orleans, their MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and MLS from North Carolina Central University. Her work can be found in Rattle, Rappahannock Review, Potomac Review, NZ’s Tarot, the B’K, and daynahodgelynch.com.
