Punch
In a circle of folding
chairs, the church women settle,
come from town
for my mama’s punch.
Among them, I
wait, too, feet dangling,
thirsty, having long before
been kicked out of the kitchen,
where she still stirs and pours
to please these women
who suspect both
her beauty and her birthplace.
Don’t ever tell, she had told me,
as I watched her
scrub the bucket, the only thing
she has to hold so much.
I cannot resist: “Miss Nola,”
I whisper, “Mama
mixed the punch in a bucket.”
The room turns
on her, framed in the doorway,
offering a crystal bowl
full of sweet, green drink,
her eyes on mine.
…
This poem is from the book Vital Records by Joycelyn Trigg (Finishing Line Press), and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/vital-records-by-joycelyn-trigg/
In Vital Records a daughter of Mississippi travels back through time, re-imagining her parents’ and others’ lives, and by extension, her own. Remembered moments become images that, like photographs, capture a moment in time. The memories in this collection are not literal but emotional memories, and in some cases they seek to speak for people who could not speak for themselves. Rather than autobiography, the collection is a poetic rendition of a life felt if not exactly how it was lived. It is the poet’s job to rescue brief moments, and this collection is dedicated to just that gesture.
Joycelyn Trigg lives in Mendocino, California, where she landed after a long career as a scholarly editor, publisher, and university communications director in the South. She holds an MFA from the Ranier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. A native of Mississippi, she will no doubt continue to write poems loosely based on remembered stories and events as well as poems that grow out of Mendocino and the beauty of the Pacific coast.
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