On a screen-porch in Baton Rouge, real low to the ground my mother’s hands rattle the old metal peeler birthing naked potatoes pulling down long skinny strips that curl like old paper and stick like wet leaves and smell just like dirt. We swim in sweaty Lou’siana air and click and clatter of bugs and kids hollering somewhere and faraway lawn mowers. My little brother is there. We’re carving raw potatoes into art stamps, a vintage project for small hands, excavating raw white flesh from each newly opened slick face, slippery blinking round and blank. I sculpt the first letter of my name with the small knife, sneak a piece of crunch into my mouth. My kindergarten fingers cut around a three-pointed tulip then two-pointed cat head I attempt a smiling sun with crown of spikes and then a Valentine heart for Mama who has covered the wooden table in newspaper set out pools of paint in little glass jars and introduced this magic with potatoes, to while away some summer time amuse herself distract her kids or vicy-versy on this long-dead afternoon that only I remember. Dip and press dip and press dip and press Yellow red and blue and green and black. Cat heads tulips overlapping shapes and “alphabits,” a red heart here and there. Mama’s hands halve and peel, leave just enough rough skin for me to hold these Earth-apples Irish roots crunchy musty lumpy tubers with dry eyes. Mama’s same hands rest now under ant-infested clay in a half-dead town where she was born and now she lies there, fingers folded, finger-bones against a blue dress chosen by strangers and unseen by us. She liked blue, we told them. Coffin closed. Screen door slams wood-smack in my faulty memory and bright paint shudders in little jars. Louisiana fire ants tunnel future mudslides sinkholes earthquakes wet dirt artifacts. We still live so low to the damp ground, with no foundation or crawl space to speak of.
Wren Donovan Published in Tattie Zine, Issue #2, November 2021 (print)