Aunties on the Porch by Martha Christina

My cousins and I danced
in and out of the sprinkler
in the heat of a southern
Indiana summer, while
our aunties planned
our supper: Aunt Della’s
green beans, slow-cooked
with a ham hock; Aunt Golda’s
prize-winning peach pie.

They’d come far from
the shoeless summers
of their childhoods,
barefoot in barnyards
and berry patches,
picking and selling
eggs and blackberries,
earning their school shoes.

They sat rocking
and fanning, rarely
reminiscing, while
we cousins ran
barefoot, laughing
across wet grass,
without fear
of hookworms
or hunger.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).