Poems by Haley Hemenway Sledge
Wiltseed
Sonny wants to be a doctor. He wanted to be a garbageman, but that’s when he was four. He walks with a weight of four generations. He’s silent, but he slams the door. Sonny cradles a baby bird, brings home some turtles. He digs with a fervor and licks the knife slick with onion juice with open eye -green from the sun- and later beats the fruit. Sonny won’t hold your hand, but shoves it in a bucket of maggots and gives you a jewelry box filled with rocks and a broken lightbulb for Christmas. Sonny sleeps on just a towel at the tip of Dauphin Island, sees the oil rigs wink little trowels at him. He just picks his teeth with a blade and sips homemade moonshine. When Memere is crying Sonny says, “y’all clean your room.” When Memere’s second husband is booming down the driveway in a ‘78 Ford- used just for hunting- Sonny says, “y’all clean your room.” When Grandpere dies Sonny says, “why didn’t y’all tell me to be there?” and when his Parrain needs directions to Sonny’s New Orleans apartment, Sonny says, “Wild Turkey.” He loves a girl hard and she leaves him. He holds a string of lifeless ducks and he eats them. He grins with deer blood on his face and fillets you some snapper- makes red fish and grits. He says he’s a romantic. Sonny wants a happy mother. He calls her weekly. Sonny bumbles on the phone to his sisters, might be moody when you visit. He says ‘fuck’ at Memere’s third wedding when mumbling with a longtime family friend. Sonny loves whiskey and warm weather. He goes to Brazil, to Italy, to Chile, to Birmingham. He takes the horizon like a full moon. Tells Memere of the leaves and trees. But back in Dixie Sonny’s hoarse, tells you of kicking ices and sickness. He makes you crylaughing when you’re young, helps you tape your sister into a fake christmas tree’s box and with a broom- as it’s raining- y’all slide her down the front steps into the suburban front yard. A magnolia tree on her left, a dogwood to the right. Your mother had all the pines removed from the yard, “cuz the needles,” she says, but you know the real reason, even if Sonny says it isn’t. Sonny moves away to yankee country. Thrives in the snow like a hermit crab in sand or a heron on land. Made of sinew stock, bamboo’s insistence- Sonny carves little proofs to himself, to people in graves, to Memere. Whittling with a dull, rusted knife Sonny wakes in the night with a silent dream- tells no one.
my mother’s rainstorm
in my mother’s throat there is a rainstorm
that wages wind
for every ounce of sun
this mother of mine does not swim upstream
does not battle rising silt for a seat
at the table
of malnourished land and water
with tight lined lips
and cracked hands
she was born there
she built it
she sucks up silt
into taffeta sackets and totes them home
clicking her heels cooing, “fais do-do, fais do-do”
to the needle palms she passes
this mother of mine spreads
silt on paper dinner plates
saying, “eat, my kings, eat”
so we nourish our bodies like this land
royal and wilting
shackled and bled
my mother a lily
pad lilting her way south at low tide
a slow churning hurricane
pushing butter up the sides of the coast
we waddle down the shore
tongues out
bread pulled from pockets
knees raw in sand
crystal dust in our bellies
butter-coated lips refracting sun
her breaking squalls haunting
the nightseasons of our growth
creeping among cordgrass for
our blooming our sprouting
her yelling, “look at my hands, look at my hands”
so that even what we propagate
what we shed
gets silt grit in their teeth
in the sheen of their new leaves
my mother’s rainstorm murmurs
a contrition while tide rises
recites beatitudes with sinking levees
she slathers sunscreen on my back
saying, “repeat after me, repeat after me”
my mother’s rainstorm whispers
a soft song
when she looks a man in the face
before showing her jowls her fangs
the calloused underside of her hands
before releasing tornadoes storm surge lightning bolts
whatever glitter falls with my mother’s rainstorm
illuminates some black mouth cur of her gut
the growls she gifted us
after our father’s funeral
my mother my memere raising kings on silt
ignoring brackish water creeping up the back steps
the sun still out
our mouths still open
her shouting, “move, lover, move”
my mother my memere
swallowing swallowing swallowing swallowing
Haley Hemenway Sledge is from the Gulf South, but currently lives in Harlem. She received her BA in Religious Studies and Southern Studies from Loyola University New Orleans and her MFA from The New School. She is the Editor-in-Chief of LIT Magazine. Her writing can be found in Revisions, Nola Defender, Black Sun Lit, Vestiges, The Atlas Review, and elsewhere.