Inheritance by Tyree Daye
My mother will leave me her mother’s deep-black
cast-iron skillet someday,
I will fry okra in it,
weigh my whole life on its black handle,
lift it up to feel a people in my hand.
I will cook dinner
for my mother on her rusting,
bleached stove with this oiled star.
My mother made her body crooked
all her life to afford this little wooden blue house.
I want her green thumbs
wound around a squash’s neck
to be wound around my wrist
telling me to stay longer.
O what she grew with the dust
dancing in blue hours.
What will happen to her body
left in the ground, to the bodies in the street,
the uncles turned to ash on the fireplace mantles
the cousins we’ve misplaced?
How many people make up this wound?
No one taught my mother how to bring us back to life,
so no one taught me.
O what we gather and O Lord
bless what we pass on.
Smuggling Grace 