Two-Faced Memory

1.   
She was no taller than the children, 
who would eventually be able to look down  
upon the oiled braids tied with black cloth, 
and greased strings threading her earlobes. 
If she’d worn jewelry, it would have been to a church. 
Still, we couldn’t imagine her in those churches, except 
to see her brother off, laid in land the Methodists owned.   
Or for her wedding—but that had been a small gathering 
at the wooden shack whose dark rooms promised adventure. 
In one corner, the iron bed surfaced in daylight, pulling  
all the worn contents of the room toward it, then sank again  
in evening, like our astral bodies dragged by an undertow.   
Grandmama, little pirate, burying the children  
under quilts and old coats, weighting our slumber with 
leftover clothes of the stubborn dead, seeding our dreams with  
haints hiding under the house, pacing the yard, perching in trees.

2.    
The green truck poised over roiling traffic  
beneath the bridge’s guardrail,  
father dead drunk, wedged behind the wheel. 
Whispers as we feigned sleep—hurt deciphered from garbled cries. 
Grandmama and mama’s prayers that brought him back  
despite ours.