Vinegar and Char

Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance

Julie Sola, Sandra Beasley

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780820354309
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie

Yes, there is barbecue, but that's just one course of the meal. With Vinegar and Char the Southern Foodways Alliance celebrates twenty years of symposia by offering a collection of poems that are by turns as sophisticated and complex, as vivid and funny, and as buoyant and poignant as any SFA gathering.

The roster of contributors includes Natasha Trethewey, Robert Morgan, Atsuro Riley, Adrienne Su, Richard Blanco, Ed Madden, Nikky Finney, Frank X Walker, Sheryl St. Germain, Molly McCully Brown, and forty-five more. These poets represent past, current, and future conversations about what it means to be southern. Throughout the anthology, region is layered with race, class, sexuality, and other shaping identities.

With an introduction by Sandra Beasley, a thought-provoking foreword by W. Ralph Eubanks, and luminous original artwork by Julie Sola, this collection is an ideal gift. Meant to be savored slowly or devoured at once, these pages are a perfect way to spend the hour before supper, with a glass of iced tea—or the hour after, with a pour of bourbon—and a fitting celebration of the SFA's focus and community.

Section III

Salat Behind Al’s Mediterranean and American Food

This evening, in Birmingham,

when I’m meeting a friend

for fried chicken

and poetry,

you prostrate before God

on a piece of cardboard box

in the back alley.

Beside you, there is a dumpster

whispering styrofoam

and onion skins.

The shells of dead cockroaches

bend and crackle

under your knees. Even they pray.

The backdoor of the restaurant

and the towering

University Parking Deck

shelter you in shadow.

Fifteen minutes from now,

you will bring me cheap fries

and fingers,

and when you ask me

if I’d like ketchup,

your accent heavy as oil,

it sounds like a proverb—

clean tomato,

sovereign God.

—ASHLEY M. JONES

Jubilee

Come down to the water. Bring your snare drum,

your hubcaps, the trash can lid. Bring every

joyful noise you’ve held at bay so long.

The fish have risen to the surface this early

morning: flounder, shrimp, and every blue crab

this side of Mobile. Bottom feeders? Please.

They shine like your Grandpa Les’ Cadillac,

the one you rode in, slow so all the girls

could see. They called to you like katydids.

And the springs in that car sounded like tubas

as you moved up and down. Make a soulful sound

unto the leather and the wheel, praise the man

who had the good sense to build a front seat

like a bed, who knew you’d never buy a car

that big if you only meant to drive it.

— GABRIELLE CALYOCORESSI

Why It’s Delicious

Because my grandmother marched out to the end

of the yard, threw the white oval seeds on the ground

and walked away, and almost overnight the tangle

of vines wrapped itself around the clothesline pole,

the fence and screened in porch. Then small green

pumpkins sprouted and brightened in places so odd

we had to move them to give them room to grow

or to keep them from breaking through the screen.

And when they were large and heavy, Mima ambled

out, lifted the pumpkins and carried them in to carve

and cook the chunks for days in soups, with rice and

with lemon. Except for a handful, she toasted

the seeds and we ate pepitas with salt, cracking shells

with our teeth to reach the slim green meat inside.

Because Jeanne’s mom planted and tended a garden

that grew peas we shucked on her new husband’s

farmhouse porch at the foot of a Pennsylvania mountain,

and she steamed them and served them for dinner

with chicken and mashed potatoes. Because that

bicentennial summer Jeanne and I joined her mom,

she arranged a net over blueberry bushes under which,

clever birds, we snuck to steal the dark ripe beads.

Because Jeanne’s mom took us to pick fat strawberries

we boiled and stirred into jam in huge pots all day,

slathered on thick slices of airy Amish bread, and carried

home in mason jars sealed with paraffin, souvenirs.

Because the fleshy grapefruit in the neighbor’s yard

overhanging our fence personally announces the coming

of winter in our central Florida town and is sweeter

and juicier than store-bought fruit I would never pay for,

and reminds me of the time we lined smudge pots up and

down the rows of groves to keep the freeze from killing

the crop, and of how I welcomed my first kiss one evening

in the crook of the arm of one of those fragrant trees.

Because the moon was full and teasing the tide with her

shimmer when I caught a striped schoolmaster at midnight

even though the fish weren’t biting on our side of the party

boat, and you scaled and fileted my keeper on the dock,

packed the pink flesh in ice for the ride home, and I cooked

it with lemon and butter and wine, and with our fingers,

we fed the perfect flaky morsels to each other’s mouths.

— ELISA ALBO

Menudo

INGREDIENTS

Mezcal	Bay Leaves
Stars	Garlic
Tripe	Onion
Copal	Chiles Guajillos
Hen	Limes
Dogs	Salt
Cow’s Feet	Coffee
Narrow Bones	Tepito
Oregano	Tortillas

DIRECTIONS

1. When your macho comes home gurgling a bottle of mezcal, begin the menudo.

2. He’ll whisper: Te amo chiquitita, then palm your face to the window. You’ll scan for stars made invisible by streetlamps & whisper: Stars see. He’ll let go & laugh: I’ve never liked Estrellita.

3. When he falls asleep at your feet, remember: he is un buen macho.

4. Cut tripe into ribbons in the sink. Finger curved ridges clean. Tripe: though combed it is a bowel.

5. Light copal in a warm clay bowl until it me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• John T. Edge, “Welcome”
• W. Ralph Eubanks, “Taking My Stand: A Foreword”
• Sandra Beasley, “Lard Poetica: An Introduction”
• Section I
• Section II
• Section III
• Contributor Notes
• Permissions and Credits
• About the Editor
• About the Southern Foodways Alliance