The Mema Poems
From North Georgia come two verses to honor a mountain matriarch, a woman of courage, who does what needs to be done.
She Tells Stories
She tells stories about being the youngest:
Crawling under her siblings’ beds to clean up messes left by barn cats who shouldn’t have been inside.
She tells stories of how hard she worked growing up on a poor farm,
How hard she worked in the kitchen at Berry to pay for her schooling,
And how hard she worked helping Granddaddy keep the kids, farm, and office running smoothly.
She tells stories about how when I was a small chattering kid,
I would always wait on the kitchen counter for Granddaddy to come home from the barn.
When he finished his lunch, he would slowly—so slowly—comb his balding hair while I giddily watched.
She tells stories about how much my sisters and I loved him.
And how much he loved us.
I remember going to graveyards with her when I was young,
To scrub the family tombstones with bleach and replace the sun-faded flowers
With fresh plastic bouquets.
I remember the smell of Granddaddy when he came in from working on the farm.
The same smell that Daddy has today—a mix of tractor and sweat.
I remember making brownies with Mema so Granddaddy could eat something sweet with his sliced sandwich.
She always let me sop the pan
Because sugary joy meant more than fear of salmonella.
And I remember going to his viewing and being so scared of the still body in the coffin.
But Mema gave him one last kiss
Because over fifty years together meant more than fear of his shell.
With Ease
We will do without.
That’s how this all began anyway.
One man’s trash, they say.
But no one warned us about pack rats.
Stealing nourishment from the potting soil,
Abandoned in the shed.
The rat relishing in the mansion
Of cups, ribbons, gardening gloves with missing thumbs
All items rife with potential
Potential for a new home. A cozy home.
The cycle continues now and again and again.
We pack our things.
Tiny clothes, old high school binders, worn out cleats.
Useless things carried
Again and again
Reluctant for a new home. A burdened home.
The potting soil, we chose to abandon it;
Why disturb the nest?
Our grandmother, though—
The queen of carrying her nesting materials
For generations now—
At 89 toted the heavy damp potting soil
Away from the shed
Into the grass
And reached barehanded deep into the bag
By handfuls she dismantled the rat’s nest.
Deboned its home.
There’s no room for weakness that beckons waste.
Mikala Jones-Wall joined Young Harris College’s Department of Literature and Languages in 2020 soon after earning her master's degree in English Composition and Rhetoric from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Young Harris College and is proud to be from Union County, Georgia. Beyond reading and writing, Mikala also enjoys hiking, learning new crafts, and pretending to leash-train her cat, Hadley.