Grandma’s Zydeco Stomp Dance: A Patchwork Poem*
Intertribal / Courtesy of the artist
(facebook.com/tony.tiger.5268)
I
Mix cultures of home
West Africa West Indies
disrupted along slave trade
French and Spanish traveling tributaries.
Mississippi red,
blood arteries
have long varied stories:
colonization and conquest.
Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, Natchez, Caddo, and
Métis, Cree, Miq’maq come down
River Women –
by virtue of French exploitation and
expulsion of our ancestors
from Nova Scotia to Manitoba
II
Three cultures
Choctaw-Biloxi, Louisiana Creole, and Creek
woven into my Grandfather –
his mother, my Great Grands.
Three is a sacred number for us:
three sisters, three worlds.
Three.
The number of strands it takes to weave.
Three.
The waters of Louisiana:
seawater
fresh water
brackish water.
III
Memory
lives in body
stomach, heart,
throat, head.
Granma’s holding court with family,
Grampa fiddle at chin
in the middle of bayou.
Place my grandmother and grandfather
emerged.
Where their Ancestors
emerged.
Our history along swath of okhina oka.
IV
We are women who shorn
our hair in
grief –
spit bone shard arrow anger
at complacent parish priests.
Our souls’ burnt edges
from prayers form an
incendiary roux:
cedar,
blood &
cottonmouth venom.
Carry our Grandma’s stories
on wide hips laughing
through split lips &
shuffle shake zydeco rhythms.
* Patchwork poem—i.e., found poem. This poem pieces together writing by Dunn and Prud’homme-Cranford to form a new poetic conversation in call and response.
