I never liked cornbread,
those sticks my mother baked
in the cast-iron molded pan,
a black pan with six
indentations like perfectly
shaped and aligned graves. Then
my grandmother showed me
how to truly eat cornbread,
baked in a cake pan, extra sugar
in the batter and finished (hot)
with butter and syrup,
pronounced sirp.
This is another in a series of poems about growing up in the South (yes, I know a lot of them are about food, but that’s better than shooting cats). The series was suggested by my friend Nancy Rosback at A Little Somethin’. She sort of grew up in the South – Southern Illinois.
This is poem is also being submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.
Photograph courtesy of Anson Mills.
