Clabber Milk Cornbread

 

 

1. Soak the cornmeal in the clabber jar overnight to loosen its toothsome bite, but only do this if it’s stone-ground (& it will be. Hurled upon the WORD each day, she’ll learn to dodge the pebbled sky).

2. When she’s five, show her the pigpen, the Yorkshire pig glazed bored in the mud. She’ll hope to play, to ride him in The Blue to the pond you love—the old hole your Daddy dug back when you was proud, ashy, unabashedly loud, dodging the rough hands you called brothers when they howled, playfully, upon you.

Back before the catfish learned to bend like reeds tryna hide from your greasy gathering, half ya Daddy’s family bunched under a fish fry’s rank.

Her fingers rake against the hem on her hip, a twitch, a wish to itch the Yorkshire behind his flitting ears. Swat her. Not hard, just enough to startle her from wanting. Then show her Mercy—cut the neck so clean, the blood forgets to leap into its red skirt. She’ll tremble, awestruck, in her feathers. Tell her, this is the first of many blessings.

3. Fry the bacon till it kicks, sputtering, like the pig’s last will & testament. Its leeched grease the foundation on which you’ll build.

4. Crack eggs. Mix with steady hand. & you’ll be steady. So steady, she’ll mistake you for a god. Your Father, just as unflappable. Couldn’t move from drink till drink moved him from you. Pastor say he watchin’, but you hope GOD good enough to shut the curtain that day you conceived

5. a dream—your Daughter, taffeta curled & thrown into cast-iron summer. She runs & you fix to catch her but she sizzle between your fingers like bacon grease, dress flapping, footsteps fervid & far-flung, she’s an auric pleat of laughter, a seamed bright sun, & you simmer in a kind of devotion, remember the flickering embers of Daddy’s eyes turned coal—if you could smote the light blinking on her back, if you could bear the burn, an old flame winking in her eyes—maybe, just maybe, you could keep her.